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COTO^lGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE APPRENTICESHIP 

OF 

WASHINGTON 

AND 

OTHER SKETCHES OF SIGNIFI- 
CANT COLONIAL PERSONAGES 



THE APPEENTIOESHIP 



OF 



WASHINGTON 

AND OTHER SKETCHES OF SIG- 
NIFICANT COLONIAL PERSONAGES 

BY 
GEORGE HODGES 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1909 



C^j 






LiERARYofOO?-:GRESS 
Two Copies Received 

Oopyn^ht Entry 

OUSS ex. XAC No. 

COPY A, 



Copyright, 1909, by 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

New York 



All Bights Eeserved 
Published, February, 1909 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Apprenticeship op Washington . 7 
II. The Hanging of Mary Dyer .... 41 

III. The Adventures of Captain Myles 

Standish 91 

IV. The Education of John Harvard . . 149 
V. The Forefathers of Jamestown . . .187 



THE APPRENTICESHIP OF 
WASHINGTON 



THE APPRENTICESHIP OF 
WASHINGTON 

THE Continental Congress which sat 
in Philadelphia in the late spring and 
early summer of 1775 had among its able 
members one who was distinguished from 
the others by the infrequency of his 
speeches and by the color of his coat. He 
sat for the most part in attentive silence, 
well satisfied with the arguments of his 
neighbors, content to forward the purposes 
of the convention by serving diligently on 
the committee which was charged with the 
arrangements for the raising of an army. 
But he wore his uniform. He appeared 
not in the attire of a legislator or of a man 
of peace, but in the garments of war, in 
the colonel's coat which he had worn in 
military service. This dress was of itself 



8 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

a speech. Buff is defined in the ' ' Century 
Dictionary " as ** a yellow color deficient 
in luminosity." The buff of that partic- 
ular uniform, however, was by no means 
deficient in luminosity. It shone with 
meaning, as the blue sky shines in the 
sun. Everybody who saw it knew that its 
wearer was convinced that war was in- 
evitable. When John Adams made his 
notable speech in which he put that convic- 
tion into words, and declared that the time 
had come to choose a commander over the 
colonial forces, he pointed to the man in 
buff and blue. There, he said, is the gen- 
eral for us. 

At that moment a career began with 
which we are all measurably familiar. 
Washington the general, we know; Wash- 
ington the president, we know ; with Wash- 
ington the colonel, however, we are not 
so well acquainted. I propose, accord- 
ingly, to recount some of the exploits of 
Colonel Washington. This I do partly be- 
cause this period of his life is not so well 



OF WASHINGTON 9 

established in the memory of most of us; 
and partly because of the interest and 
value which naturally inhere in the begin- 
nings of things, and specially in the begin- 
nings of noble lives. For biography ap- 
peals to our ambition. We read the life of 
a great man not only for the pleasure 
which we get from his society but for the 
sake of learning, if possible, how to be- 
come great. What was there in him and 
about him which thus exalted him above 
his fellows I How did he go to work to 
attain the high purposes of his life! 
Through what sort of training did he pass 
into his might and his fame? While we 
are still at such an age that the major 
part of our life seems to be before us rather 
than behind us, we secretly hope that we 
may somehow share in the spirit of the 
great. We may not venture to solicit the 
mantle of Elijah, but we think it quite 
within the possibilities that at least the 
shadow of Peter passing by may helpfully 
overshadow us. 



10 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

My subject, accordingly, is the ^^ Ap- 
prenticeship of Washington," and my pur- 
pose is to consider some of the experiences 
which served to fit him to respond to the 
call of the Continental Congress, to lead 
our armies, and finally to establish us as a 
people upon enduring foundations. 

It is plain that young Washington lived 
a large part of his life under the open sky. 
He was born and brought up in the coun- 
try. There is nothing impossible in the 
tradition of the cherry tree or in the tradi- 
tion of the breaking of the colt. The im- 
probable element in these stories is the 
extraordinary conversation which accom- 
panies them. The talk which goes on be- 
tween the lad and the father is as far re- 
moved from reality as the conferences be- 
tween Adam and Eve which are reported 
by John Milton. Adam, as M. Taine ob- 
serves, is a graduate of the University of 
Oxford, and has a seat in the Long Parlia- 
ment. And Mr. Lodge makes a similar re- 
mark concerning the Washington of Par- 



OF WASHINGTON H 

son Weems's stories. This young person, 
lie says, is a near relative of Sanford and 
Merton and of Harry and Lucy. He is one 
of Miss Maria Edgeworth^s and Miss 
Hannah More's good boys. The truth is 
that Parson Weems, knowing nothing 
about Washington's boyhood, but knowing 
well that the purchasers of his book would 
wish to be informed regarding that period 
of his career, told these pleasant tales to 
show that the great man began to exhibit 
remarkable qualities at a tender age. Un- 
fortunately, at the moment of writing, the 
ideal of a perfect child was that which was 
set forth by the maiden ladies to whom I 
have referred. The proper child of that 
day was a good deal of a prig. Washing- 
ton, so far as the historians can discover, 
had nothing of the prig about him. I do 
not applaud him for lying or for swearing ; 
but there is a certain wholesome satisfac- 
tion to be derived from the fact that he did 
occasionally tell a lie, when it seemed to 
serve his purpose; especially in his early 



12 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

years, when he dealt with Indians. I sup- 
pose it was considered necessary to lie to 
Indians. He also was able, when the situa- 
tion appeared to demand unusual empha- 
sis, to use quite vigorous language. He 
was a very human person, with a hot and 
hasty temper. 

It is to be noticed, however, even in these 
apocryphal stories, that the scene is laid 
out of doors, and that the prig, their hero, 
has either a hatchet or a halter in his hand ; 
never a book. It does not anywhere ap- 
pear that the young Washington took kind- 
ly to books, or that he was ever at any 
period of his life given to reading. It is 
true that in 1748 he noted in his diary that 
he * ^ read to the reign of King John ' ' and 
** in the Spectator read to 143," but these 
are isolated items. It is doubtful if he 
ever got in the Spectator to 144, or in the 
history to the reign of the third Henry. 
He was certainly well acquainted with the 
reign of the third George, which is more 
to the purpose. No, the items which he 



OF WASHINGTON 13 

records with far more frequency and with 
much more interest are such as these: 
'' Went a hunting with Jack Custis and 
catched a fox after three hours' chase; 
found it in the creek.'' ** February 12th, 
catched two foxes." *' February 13th, 
catched two more foxes. ' ' 

Books entered of necessity into the day's 
work of the boy. Hobby, the sexton of the 
parish church, taught him his letters, and 
guided the first imcertain motions of the 
handwriting which was afterwards so 
strong and dignified. Williams, the school- 
master of Bridge's Creek, gave the re- 
mainder of his formal education. That 
was all that the schools did for him. The 
most that he got, beyond the essential rudi- 
ments, was some sort of idea of the world 
in which he lived, and a good knowledge of 
applied mathematics. The fact that he 
spelled well shows that he attended to his 
lessons. His mother was a particularly 
bad speller, even in a day when private 
judgment and academic authority were 



14 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

still contending at the point of everybody's 
pen. 

Whatever culture he had in his early 
years came from the high-minded and 
courteous society of the neighborhood. 
Thackeray said that colonial Virginia was 
the most aristocratic country in the world. 
The remark was made in a novel but it had 
a good foundation in fact. The land was 
sparsely settled, being for the most part 
divided into great estates. Each of these 
estates had its manor house, with many 
large rooms, built for generous hospitality, 
flanked by the slaves ' quarters, and stand- 
ing in the midst of gardens and fertile 
fields. One still catches a glimpse of such 
noble mansions in a journey down the 
James Eiver. Washington's own house at 
Mount Vernon is the most familiar exam- 
ple. These places were inhabited by men 
and women of excellent English stock, who 
maintained the pleasant and honest Eng- 
lish traditions. They managed their house- 
holds and their herds, entertained continu- 



OF WASHINGTON 15 

ally, were forever riding back and forth on 
horses along the wood roads making visits, 
going to dancing parties, and to church on 
Sundays. The young men were fond of 
hunting and competed one with another in 
rough sports. They were also fond of the 
young women, following the good fashion 
of the race. It is recorded of Washington 
that although he was for the most part a 
pretty steady boy, he once ' ' surprised his 
schoolmates by romping with one of the 
largest girls." Indeed, it is remembered 
of him that he had a habit of falling in love, 
and he is known to have entertained tender 
thoughts of several large girls before he 
met the widow Custis. This too contrib- 
uted much to his education. 

On the whole, however, the distinctive 
feature of all this life, as I said at the be- 
ginning, was that it was lived under the 
open sky. The society of the neighborhood 
was indeed aristocratic, but it was an aris- 
tocracy mitigated by manual labor. Most 
of the great people were land poor. All of 



16 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

them worked with their hands, the women 
in the kitchen and the men in the barn. A 
lad who grew to manhood under these con- 
ditions knew how to do things. He was a 
competent person, who could ride a horse, 
and milk a cow, and break a colt, and mend 
a roof, and make a bridge. Washington 
lived out of doors all his life. He was on 
horseback nearly every day. The eques- 
trian statues represent him characteris- 
tically. He was engaged in overseeing 
things, first his estates, then his soldiers, 
then the nation. He had the clearness of 
sight which comes from dealing in a large 
way with nature. His nerves were sea- 
soned in the sun. He had an executive 
habit. 

The lad's first ambition was to go to sea. 
He knew nothing about the sea, and it had 
therefore a strong attraction for him. He 
wanted to get on board a tobacco ship, and 
go out in search of his fortune. Happily, 
his young energies were set to work in the 
business of surveying. This direction he 



OF WASHINGTON 17 

owed in great part to a valuable friend 
and kinsman, Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Lord 
Fairfax was then sixty years of age, an 
Oxford scholar and man of the world, who 
had turned his back upon a society which 
had disappointed him, and had come over 
here to look after his great possessions. It 
was probably Fairfax who had set young 
Washington to reading the Spectator ^ to 
which he himself is said to have contrib- 
uted a number. The old man took the boy 
into his heart. They used to ride and hunt 
and talk together. Now he suggested that 
he should go out into the forest, and sur- 
vey the Fairfax lands, beyond the Blue 
Eidge. 

Washington was by this time of the age 
of sixteen years. I copy Mr. Lodge's ac- 
count of his appearance. '' He was tall 
and muscular, approaching the stature of 
more than six feet which he afterwards at- 
tained. He was not yet filled out to manly 
proportions, but was rather spare, after 
the fashion of youth. He had a well- 



18 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

shaped, active figure, symmetrical, except, 
for the unusual length of his arms, indicat- 
ing uncommon strength. His light brown 
hair was drawn back from his broad fore- 
head, and grayish-blue eyes looked hap- 
pily, and perhaps soberly, on the pleasant 
Virginia world about him. The face was 
open and manly, with a square, massive 
jaw, and a general expression of calmness 
and strength. Fair and florid, big and 
strong, he was, taking him for all in all, as 
fine a specimen of his race as could be 
found in the English colonies." 

Thus he set out upon the first day's task 
of his young manhood. It was in the month 
of March, and there was much rain, swell- 
ing the streams, over which there were no 
bridges. The boy and his companion slept 
in settlers' huts, or under the trees. Some- 
times they went hungry ; sometimes, as the 
surveyor says in his journal, they had a 
good dinner, ** wine and rum punch in 
plenty, and a good feather bed with clean 
sheets." Once they met thirty Indians 



OF WASHINGTON 19 

coming from war. '^ We had some liquor 
with us, ' ' he says, * ^ of which we gave them 
part. It elevated their spirits, put them in 
the humor of dancing, of whom we had a 
war dance, ' ' which he describes. The jour- 
nal shows that he looked about him atten- 
tively. A man who lives in the woods must 
keep his eyes open. But Washington saw 
other sights than trees and animals, and 
knew how to set down what he saw briefly 
and clearly. This appears more noticeably 
in the journal which he kept when he went 
shortly after this to the Barbadoes with his 
brother Lawrence. He has an eye for the 
pursuits and pleasures of the people, for 
the crops and the condition of the markets, 
for the administration of the government. 
One characteristic of his account of his sur- 
veying is the small importance which he 
attaches to the hardships of the journey. 
This is the proper result of the sturdy 
training of a lad bred in a new country, 
* ^ expecting accidents, ' ^ like Sancho Panza. 
On his visit to the Barbadoes he caught the 



W THE APPRENTICESHIP 

smallpox, an experience to which he gives 
some two lines of his journal. 

Washington spent but a month in this 
particular survey, but he was busy for 
three years as public surveyor, surveying 
lines which stand true to this day. Mean- 
while, this frontier life was making him 
ready for his next notable undertaking. 
News kept coming from the settlements be- 
yond the mountains that the French were 
trespassing on English land. This, indeed, 
was a part of a concerted plan. The Eng- 
lish had built their colonies along the coast, 
the French had made theirs on the banks 
of the rivers. It would seem at first as if 
there was enough room in the great unset- 
tled continent for both these companies of 
colonists. This, however, was a view at 
variance with the theories upon which land 
titles at that time proceeded. The English 
theory was that the possession of land 
along the sea entitled the owner to all the 
country which lay westward back of his 
farm to the Pacific Ocean. The French, on 



OF WASHINGTON 21 

the other hand, maintained that the discov- 
ery of a river entitled the discoverer to all 
the regions drained by that river and by 
its remotest tributaries. Under this the- 
ory, the French held the St. Lawrence and 
the Mississippi, and they claimed every- 
thing which lay between the Alleghenies in 
the east and the Bockies in the west. The 
point where these claims, English and 
French, came first into actual conflict was 
at the headwaters of the Ohio. 

News came that the French were settling 
in those parts, and were asserting their 
rightful possession of them. It was neces- 
sary to send out somebody to learn what 
the situation was. The Governor of Vir- 
ginia chose Washington. The mission in- 
volved a journey of five or six hundred 
miles through wild woods, in peril of hos- 
tile Frenchmen and possibly hostile sav- 
ages for the delivery of a message which 
might lead very speedily to a declaration 
of war. Washington was now of the age of 
twenty-one years. Out he set, then, upon 



22 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

this expedition, having with him his old 
fencing-master to act as interpreter in his 
dealings with the French, and an experi- 
enced and daring trader, Christopher Gist, 
to be their guide. They found the Indians 
wavering between friendship with the 
French and friendship with the English, 
but rather inclined at that moment to side 
with the English. The French, they sus- 
pected, were intending to take away their 
lands. Washington went to the remotest 
limits of diplomatic circumlocution to pre- 
vent the Indians from entertaining a like 
suspicion of the English, and on the whole, 
with some assistance from the contents of 
various persuasive black bottles, he was 
successful. 

With the French the same arrangements 
availed at least to disclose the thoughts of 
their hearts. *' The wine, as they dosed 
themselves pretty plentiful with it, soon 
banished the restraint which at first ap- 
peared in their conversation. . . . They 
told me that it was their absolute design to 



OF WASHINGTON 23 

take possession of the Ohio. ' ' During this 
exercise of diplomacy by intoxication, 
Washington sat by, very sober and very 
attentive. He looked about him with the 
eye of a frontiersman and with the instinct 
of a soldier. He noted the point of land 
where the Allegheny and the Monongahela 
meet, now the site of Pittsburgh, and re- 
marked its strategic importance. While 
the French commandant was writing his 
polite statement of the claims of his nation, 
Washington was making a sketch of the 
fort, and learning how many men and guns 
were there. 

It was in December when the ambassa- 
dorial party came back through the long 
forests, and a hard time they had of it in 
the rain and snow. They found the rivers 
full of floating ice, and fell into the middle 
of one of them, spending the night on an 
island in their frozen clothes. But they 
made their way at last to Williamsburg, the 
capital of Virginia. Here Washington de- 
livered his message. Here he printed both 



M THE APPRENTICESHIP 

the reply of the French commander and 
his own journal of the expedition. This 
document presently arrived in England, 
where it was much read and commented 
upon. 

It was evident to discerning minds in 
England as well as in the colonies that the 
time was approaching when another cam- 
paign must be undertaken in that long war 
which under various names had been 
fought since first the barbarians assailed 
the walls of Eome. The Teuton and the 
Latin, even in those early days, repre- 
sented radically different ideas. The Latin 
stood for the centralization of power, the 
Teuton for its distribution. The Latin po- 
litical idea was that one man constituted 
the state: the king was the rightful pos- 
sessor of all land and the rightful master 
of all people. The Teuton political idea 
was that in the state every man counted 
one : power w,as delegated by the people to 
rulers who were their representatives. 
These ideas pervaded and determined all 



OF WASHINGTON 25 

life. They made the north of Europe dif- 
ferent from the south of Europe not only 
politically but ecclesiastically and socially. 
The Teutonic principle is essentially demo- 
cratic. It implies private judgment rather 
than authority. It works out naturally into 
a republican form of government and into 
Protestantism. It is significant that the 
Protestant reformation succeeded in the 
Teutonic nations and failed in the Latin 
nations. The wars which accompanied the 
ecclesiastical revolution were but another 
campaign in the long race struggle. The 
same is true, in a way, of the civil strife 
in England which resulted in the Com- 
monwealth of Oliver Cromwell; the de- 
bate was as to the possession of power, 
whether it belonged to the king or to the 
people. 

The fight between the French and the 
English for the possession of this continent 
was therefore a contest charged with the 
most serious and profound consequences. 
The political, the religious, and the social 



26 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

life of our people depended upon the result. 
The French and Indian war was incompa- 
rably the most important contention which 
has taken place in the whole course of our 
history. 

The war lasted about seventy-five years, 
beginning in 1689. This is the date which 
Mr. Fiske sets as the end of the primitive 
period and the beginning of the mediaeval 
period of American history. The mediaeval 
period ended and the modern period began 
exactly a century later, with the adoption 
of the Constitution in 1789. The French 
and Indian war fell into four campaigns. 
The first campaign was called King Wil- 
liam's war; it was made notable by the 
valor and ability of the French commander 
Frontenac, and the French had the best of 
it. The second campaign was called Queen 
Anne's warj and the French had tne worst 
of it. The third campaign was King 
George's war, during which the men of 
New England captured Louisburg. The 
fourth campaign was the Seven Years' 



OF WASHINGTON 27 

war; it involved most of the nations of 
Europe: England and Prussia fought 
against France, Austria, Eussia, and 
Spain. At the end of this last campaign, 
the English had taken from the French 
every acre of their American possessions. 
The first shot in this decisive war was fired 
by Colonel Washington. 

The declaration of French claims which 
Washington brought back from the Ohio 
called for an immediate answer, and the 
Governor of Virginia raised troops to 
carry it. He made Washington a colonel. 
He sent Captain Trent to fortify the stra- 
tegic junction of the rivers to whose impor- 
tance the young diplomat had called atten- 
tion. In April, 1754, leaving a superior 
officer to follow with the main body of 
troops, Washington pushed forward with 
two companies to find presently that the 
French had fallen upon Trent's fort, 
turned out the garrison with hard words 
rather than with hard blows, and taken 
possession. Washington determined at 



28 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

once to march his hundred and fifty men 
against them. Thus they arrived at Great 
Meadows, where natural banks of earth 
made the beginnings of an entrenchment 
which they named Fort Necessity. The 
clearing away of the bushes made it, as 
Washington remarked, ^ * a charming place 
for encounter.'' Then word came that a 
company of Frenchmen had left the fort 
at the point now called Fort Duquesne, 
and were coming in their direction. Wash- 
ington, with his soldiers and some friendly 
Indians, marched to meet them, found them 
encamped in the early morning after a 
black night of rain, and promptly fired 
upon them with tragic effect. That 
was the shot which set all Europe blaz- 
ing, and began a war which lasted seven 
years. 

Washington, as I have remarked, was 
not given to talking much about himself, 
but upon this occasion he said some things 
which he afterwards repented. ^' I flatter 
myself," he writes to his governor, ^' [that 



OF WASHINGTON 29 

I have] resolution enough to face what any 
man durst, as shall be proved when it comes 
to the test, which I believe we are on the 
borders of. ' ' To which he added, * * I heard 
the bullets whistle and, believe me, there is 
something charming in the sound. ' ' George 
the Second, to whom this sentence was re- 
peated, said '' very sensibly," that the 
young man ** would not say so if he had 
been used to hear many." But he had not 
at that time been used to hear many, and 
he did say so. He thought it and said it. 
That is, this colonel of twenty-two had 
fighting blood in his veins. The old instinct 
asserted itself in him which has ever, in all 
races, sent men out with weapons in search 
of their neighbors. Strange as it may seem 
to us peaceful persons, to most of whom the 
nearest approach to war has been in the 
columns of the newspapers, some of whom 
cannot even fire a gun at a tree without 
shutting their eyes, this young man loved 
to fight. He delighted in the peril of his 
life. At this time he had no prudence, and 



30 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

made no calculation of the difference in 
numbers between himself and the enemy. 
The thing seems not to have entered into 
his mind. He was eager to get into action 
and kill somebody. 

News of this encounter came to Fort 
Duquesne, and Fort Necessity was pres- 
ently besieged by a force greatly superior. 
Washington was for fighting them in the 
open, in the convenient clearing, but they 
preferred the local custom and fired from 
the shelter of the trees. And it rained very 
hard, till in the fort the men were ankle- 
deep in mud. Finally, Washington had to 
surrender, and marched back along the 
trail through the woods defeated. He left 
his hostages, one of them his old fencing- 
master, and the other a Scotchman named 
Stobo, who was taken to Quebec, and, one 
day, making his escape, showed General 
Wolfe a path which led up to the Plains of 
Abraham. 

During this expedition Washington had 
complained bitterly about his pay. He 



OF WASHINGTON 31 

would prefer, lie said, the glory of serving 
for nothing rather than the ignominy of 
serving for next to nothing. He did not 
complain of danger or of hardship, but 
seriously objected to whatever seemed to 
him to be unjust. Thus though he greatly 
desired a part in the impending war, he re- 
fused to take a position where as a colonial 
officer he would be outranked by any petty 
captain who belonged to the regular army. 
It was one of the common grievances. The 
matter was got over by an invitation from 
General Braddock to join his staff. 

Braddock was the new Commander-in- 
Chief who had come from England to pun- 
ish the insolence of the French. He was 
a good soldier, who had seen some service, 
but he was absolutely ignorant in all mat- 
ters which pertained to the woods. His 
acquaintance with trees was wholly con- 
fined to tame trees. Braddock was, more- 
over, a very conservative person. He had 
learned how to fight under competent mas- 
ters, and had read books upon the subject. 



32 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

He knew by heart all the rubrics and can- 
ons of conventional and respectable war. 
He had pronounced convictions on the sub- 
ject of uniforms, and on the true order of 
a martial procession. He was a military 
ritualist. This precise person now issued 
forth to fight Indians. Washington, on the 
natural ground of acquaintance with the 
country, offered him advice, but he declined 
it. He did not propose at his age to take 
instruction from a youth in buckskin re- 
garding the art of war. That was the heart 
of the whole matter. 

So they made their way along the hard 
roads and across the rivers, a good little 
army. They forded the Monongahela near 
the present site of the Carnegie steel 
works, purposing to march thence to the 
French fort. Everybody knows what hap- 
pened. The French and Indians fought 
from behind the trees. Braddock had 
never in his life fought from behind a tree. 
He compelled his men to fight in platoons, 
as men were accustomed to fight in Europe. 



OF WASHINGTON 33 

The result was that seven hundred men and 
sixty-two out of their eighty-six officers 
were killed or wounded. Braddock himself 
fell, aware at last of his tragic blunder, 
saying, too late, ^* I will do better another 
time.'' Washington, who had two horses 
shot under him and four bullets through 
his coat, rallied the fugitives, read the 
prayer-book service over the dead general, 
and conducted the retreat. 

Thereafter, the war was waged in other 
places, ending at Quebec. Washington had 
little to do with it. He had learned his 
lesson. He had observed that frontiers- 
men were able to meet regular soldiers and 
overcome them. He had served his ap- 
prenticeship. For a dozen peaceful years 
he managed his estates, looked after his 
slaves, administered local affairs as a mem- 
ber of the vestry, and colonial affairs as a 
member of the Virginia assembly. He rode 
up across the country to New York, and 
thence to Boston, where he attended a ses- 
sion of the Great and General Court, was 



34 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

asked to dinner at all the great houses, and 
went to a dancing party every evening. It 
is not likely that it occurred to him that he 
might presently interrupt these gay fes- 
tivities. Everybody was glad to meet the 
gallant and handsome young colonel. His 
cloak of white and scarlet brightened all 
the countryside as he rode along with his 
aides and his servants. It is pleasantly 
remembered of him that he was particular 
about his dress. In his orders to the haber- 
dashers and other tradesfolk of London he 
showed an interest in being in the mode. 
He had a keen sense of the fitness of 
things, which afterwards made him the 
most dignified of our Presidents. No other 
of our chief magistrates has carried him- 
self so like a king. 

This did not prevent him from falling 
temporarily in love with Mary Philipse, as 
he passed through New York ; nor did it in- 
terfere with his falling permanently in love 
with Martha Custis. He met her one day 
at dinner — which was then a midday meal 



OF WASHINGTON 35 

— spent the afternoon in her cheerful so- 
ciety, and stayed to tea. The next day in 
the morning he made his dinner-call, and 
before noon the young colonel and the 
young widow were happily engaged to be 
married. They do not look it in the sedate 
pictures, but that is how it happened. At 
the wedding ^ * the bride was attired in silk 
and satin, laces and brocade, with pearls on 
her neck and in her ears, while the bride- 
groom appeared in blue and silver trimmed 
with scarlet, and with gold buckles at his 
knees and on his shoes." So they rode 
away after the ceremony, the bride in a 
coach and six, her husband riding beside 
her, mounted on a splendid horse and fol- 
lowed by all the gentlemen of the party. 
Here we take leave of him, on the porch of 
Mount Vernon. His next residence was 
Craigie House, in Cambridge. 

Looking back now, over this period of 
apprenticeship, we perceive that Washing- 
ton learned his most notable lessons under 
the tuition of defeat. Defeat imparts an 



36 THE APPRENTICESHIP 

instruction and even an inspiration of its 
own, and is sometimes more significant and 
more effective than victory. Leonidas and 
his Spartans were defeated at Thermopy- 
lae ; Warren was defeated at Bunker Hill ; 
that tall shaft marks a battleground from 
which our men were driven. The news of 
that encounter reached Washington on his 
way to Boston. '' Did the militia fight? '' 
he said. And when he learned that they 
stood their ground and fought well, 
** Then/' he exclaimed, *' the liberties of 
the country are safe.'' He had learned by 
his own experience that there is a differ- 
ence between defeat and defeat. 

Washington learned at Great Meadows 
that courage is not enough for the winning 
of a battle ; the soldier must be properly 
equipped. He learned at Braddock's Field 
that even courage and equipment together 
are not enough; the soldier must under- 
stand the situation and adapt himself to it. 
Strong in the strength of these lessons, 
with the advantage of a sound body, a con- 



OF WASHINGTON 37 

iBdent spirit, and a clear conscience, he en- 
tered upon that stage of his career wherein 
he was revealed to all people for all time a 
great soldier, and a great citizen, and a 
great man. 



THE HANGING OF MARY 
DYER 



II 

THE HANGING OF MARY DYER' 

COTTON MATHER, in the '' Magna- 
lia," makes no mention of the name 
of Mistress Anne Hutchinson. He gives an 
account of her opinions, but omits her 
name out of regard for her relatives, 
among whom, he says, there are so many 
worthy and useful persons. He calls her 
an Erroneous Gentlewoman. He says that 
she had a haughty carriage, a busy spirit, 
and a voluble tongue ; but he cannot deny 
that she had also a competent wit. This 
wit she exercised in the organization and 
maintenance of a Woman's Club. 

Mrs. Hutchinson was the first person in 
the country to perceive the importance of 
assembling the women of the neighborhood 
for mutual cultivation of mind and for the 
direction of public opinion. Mather says 

* This Paper was the Founder's Lecture at Bryn Mawr 

College, 1908. 

41 



42 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

that these meetings used to be called ' ' Gos- 
sipings,'' but the gossiping was of a very- 
serious and improving sort. The sixty or 
eighty women who met every week at Mrs. 
Hutchinson *s house in School Street came 
to listen to her exposition of the sermon 
which Mr. John Cotton had preached on 
the previous Sunday. She would repeat 
the sermon, point by point, by way of re- 
freshing the memory of her hearers ; and 
** after the Repetition," says Mather, 
* * she would make her Explicatory and Ap- 
plicatory Declamations." These Explica- 
tory and Applicatory Declamations soon 
brought Mrs. Hutchinson and her club 
under the censure of the church. For the 
interpreter allowed herself a large liberty 
of difference. Sometimes she agreed with 
the preacher, but sometimes she found him 
in error. Of Mr. Cotton she approved ; but 
when Mr. Wilson, his colleague, preached, 
she did not hesitate to show the women of 
the congregation the weak places in his ser- 
mon, nor to subject his theology to her 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 43 

lively criticism. She divided both the 
clergy and the laity of the colony into 
two classes — conventional Christians, who 
were living under a Covenant of Works, to 
the peril of their souls, and genuine Chris- 
tians, who were living under a Covenant of 
Grace. And she finally told the club that of 
all the ministers of the neighborhood only 
two — Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wheelwright, her 
brother-in-law — ^were under the Covenant 
of Grace. 

Mrs. Hutchinson's '^ Scandalous, Dan- 
gerous, and Enchanting Extravagancies," 
to quote again from the ' ' Magnalia, ' ' went 
straight in the face of the Puritan theory 
of government. The men of Massachusetts 
Bay had in mind the constitution of the 
Jewish people after their return from ex- 
ile, when they were ruled not by princes 
but by priests. They had established, ac- 
cordingly, an administration of God, in the 
form of a state wherein the franchise was 
restricted to the members of the church 
and among whose officers the ministers had 



44 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

high places. They endeavored, in consist- 
ence with this ideal, to surround the per- 
son of the minister with all respect and 
reverence. He was to be heard with pro- 
found attention ; his voice was to be obedi- 
ently heeded, as a voice from heaven. The 
stability of both church and state was felt 
to rest upon the devout submission of the 
people to the mind of the clergy. That, at 
least, was the opinion of the clergy. And 
here, of a sudden, was Mrs. Hutchinson, 
with her competent wit and her enchant- 
ing extravagancies, differing from the 
preacher, and saying so with all freedom 
and force of language to more than sixty 
women every week. It was not only an 
heretical and schismatical position, but was 
fairly revolutionary. It undermined the 
universal foundations. Indeed, it came out 
clearly as a very practical peril when the 
Pequot war arose, and the men of Boston 
were called to aid in fighting the Indians, 
and many of them were perplexed in con- 
science, and doubtful whether to go or stay, 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 45 

because Mrs. Hutchinson said that their 
chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Wilson, was under 
a Covenant of Works. 

Finally, a council was held at Cambridge 
to decide what to do with Mrs. Hutchinson, 
and she was formally condemned and ex- 
communicated, and the first woman's club 
in this country was ignominiously dis- 
solved and forbidden to meet again. Mrs. 
Hutchinson and her friends were found to 
be guilty of ** eighty-five erroneous opin- 
ions and nine unwholesome expressions. '* 
The statistics show the thoroughness with 
which the examination of Mrs. Hutchin- 
son's theology was conducted. Pope Pius 
X, looking over the whole field of modern 
thought, notices only sixty-five erroneous 
opinions ! 

The Cambridge meeting-house was 
crowded on that March day in 1638. All 
the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, had 
each his separate word of malediction. 
Anne Hutchinson sat silent. Dudley, the 
Deputy Governor, remarked that though 



46 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

she had repented in writing, there was no 
repentance in her face; probably not. 
Finally, John Wilson pronounced the sen- 
tence: ** Therefore, in the name of the 
Lord Jesus Christ and in the name of the 
church, I do not only pronounce you worthy 
to be cast out, but I do cast you out ; and in 
the name of Christ, I do deliver you up to 
Satan, that you may learn no more to blas- 
pheme, to seduce and to lie; and I do ac- 
count you from this time forth to be a 
Heathen and Publican, and so to be held of 
all the Brethren and Sisters of this congre- 
gation and of others ; therefore I command 
you in the name of Jesus Christ and of this 
church as a Leper to withdraw yourself out 
of this congregation.'' The formula was 
not so long nor so anatomically explicit as 
the major excommunication, but it was 
quite as effective. 

As Anne Hutchinson, in obedience to the 
terms of this imprecation, made her soli- 
tary way out of the meeting-house, one 
woman rose up and took her hand and 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 47 

walked out with her. This woman was 
Mary Dyer. 

It is probable that Mary Dyer would 
have done as much as that for any perse- 
cuted woman, out of the kindness of her 
heart and because of her instinctive sympa- 
thy with the unpopular and the oppressed. 
But she was Mrs. Hutchinson's particular 
friend and disciple. Her distress on Mrs. 
Hutchinson's account had already brought 
upon her a domestic grief which, in that 
coarse age, had subjected her to the jeers 
of her neighbors. The two had suffered 
together, and together they had found 
strength, and solace in sorrow, in the doc- 
trine of the Inward Light. 

The doctrine of the Inward Light has 
been believed among Christians since the 
day when the apostles said, ^* It seemed 
good to the Holy Ghost and to us." That 
bold sentence is the classic expression of it. 
The apostles and brethren thereby affirmed 
a direct communication between God and 
themselves, and a sense of duty derived 



48 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

from that divine disclosure. They de- 
clared, therefore, that though they knew 
very well what the Church said and what 
the Bible said, they proposed to do other- 
wise. The question under debate was the 
obligation of the law of Moses. There was 
no doubt about the law ; there it was, plain 
as the blue sky. But they decided not to 
enforce it. They resolved unanimously 
that a man might be a good Christian with- 
out the ceremonies or the sacraments which 
were enjoined in the Bible and universal in 
the Church. It was the most radical action 
ever taken by any body of reasonable 
Christians. The Lutheran omission of the 
bishops, and the Quaker omission of the 
sacraments, were conservative in compari- 
son with it. This action, thus contradicting 
all authority, was taken in obedience to the 
Inward Light. 

The assurance of the Inward Light has 
always been the reinforcement of the indi- 
vidual against the dominance of the institu- 
tion. The institution looms up high as the 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 49 
hills and wide as the horizon, demanding 
the submission and abasement of the indi- 
vidual ; you must do as we say, and believe 
as we teach. But the individual rises in 
protest and revolt. In the days of the 
Early Church he is a Montanist, saying, 
*' We lay folk are priests as well as you.'' 
In the Middle Ages he is a mystic, going 
straight to God without the mediation of 
rites or persons. In later times, he is a 
Quaker, keeping devout silence that he may 
hear God speaking in his soul. 

The followers of the Inward Light have 
always been obnoxious to the established 
order. Men in authority have plainly per- 
ceived that these are of a non-conforming 
spirit, holding the law of their own souls 
above all laws made by courts ecclesiastical 
or civil, and defying the oppression of uni- 
formity. The Franciscan friar, who both 
in public and in private abused the very 
name of St. Catherine, and scorned her 
'' with so orgulous a mind," and the other 
Franciscan who, while his brethren were in 



50 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

the choir of San Domenico after dinner, 
catching sight of St. Catherine in the 
church in an ecstasy, being in a trance as 
she prayed, ^' came down and pricked her 
in many places with a needle," thus re- 
vealed by word and deed the instinctive 
irritation and enmity of the conservative 
mind against the person who claims to talk 
with God. Wilson and Dudley and Win- 
throp and Shepard felt the same way. 
When Mrs. Hutchinson affirmed that * * her 
Faith was not produced and scarce ever 
strengthened by the public Ministry of the 
Word, but by her own private Meditations 
and Eevelations, " every public Minister of 
the Word felt himself personally affronted. 
And when she compared herself to Daniel, 
and likened the magistrates to the presi- 
dents and princes who cast Daniel into the 
den of lions, the magistrates were of the 
same mind with the ministers. And both 
agreed with him who said, as touching Mrs. 
Hutchinson, that ** one would hardly have 
guessed her to be an Antitype of Daniel, 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 51 

but ]'ather of the lions, after they were let 
looso.'' 

But to Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyer 
the religion of the magistrates and min- 
isters was cold and hard and formal. They 
found God by a way more direct and imme- 
diate, entering into the consciousness of 
His presence in the sanctuary of their own 
souls. And what they heard from Him in 
such blessed intimacy, that they spoke and 
followed. 

Mary Dyer came to this country with her 
husband in 1635. They had lived in Lon- 
don, where William Dyer had been a mil- 
liner in the New Exchange. Mrs. Dyer 
is described by a Dutch writer, Gerald 
Croese, as *^ a person of no mean extract 
and parentage, of an estate pretty plenti- 
ful, of a comely stature and countenance, 
of a piercing knowledge in many things, 
of a wonderful sweet and pleasant dis- 
course, so fit for great affairs that she 
wanted nothing that was manly, except 
only the name and the sex." George 



52 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

Bishop, whose book, ** New England 
Judged," was written the next year sfter 
her death, depicts her as * ' a comely grave 
Woman, and of a goodly Personage, and 
one of good Report, having a Husband of 
an Estate, fearing the Lord, and a Mother 
of Children." Even Governor Winthrop 
admits that she was *' a very proper and 
fair woman," though he adds that she was 
** notoriously infected with Mrs. Hutchin- 
son's errors, and very censorious and 
troublesome, she being of a very proud 
spirit, and much addicted to revelations." 
The fact, which appears in such writing of 
hers as remains, that she was better edu- 
cated than was then the custom of women, 
may have increased the suspicion and dis- 
like with which she was regarded by the 
Governor. For it was Winthrop who said 
of poor Ann Hopkins, '* a godly young 
woman, and of special parts, ' ' who was re- 
ported to have lost her wits ^ ^ by occasion 
of her giving herself wholly to reading and 
writing," that " if she had attended her 



THE HANGING OF MART DYER 53 

household affairs, and not gone out of her 
way and calling to meddle in such things as 
are proper for men, whose minds are 
stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and 
might have improved them usefully and 
honorably in the place God had set her." 

William and Mary were at once admitted 
to membership in the Boston church, of 
which John Wilson was the pastor and 
John Cotton the teacher. The next year 
Mrs. Hutchinson began her meetings, hav- 
ing the Dyers among her intimate friends 
and followers. When Mr. Wheelwright was 
condemned, preparatory to the excommuni- 
cation of Mrs. Hutchinson, William Dyer 
was one of the signers of a protest which 
maintained that by his condemnation the 
church in Boston had condemned the truth 
of Christ. He was therefore disfranchised 
and disarmed. Presently, when the Hutch- 
insons went into exile, the Dyers went with 
them. They were among the eighteen 
founders of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 
1638, and among the eight founders of 



64 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

Newport in 1639. William Dyer was 
shortly made secretary of Portsmouth and 
Newport, and thereafter held various re- 
sponsible and honorable offices, becoming 
attorney general of the colony in 1649. 
Two years after he went to England on 
public business. Thither his wife had pre- 
ceded him. He returned, but she remained 
for five years. During that time she be- 
came a Quaker. 

The Quakers were related to the Puri- 
tans as the Abolitionists were related to 
the friends of freedom before the Civil 
War. They were extreme persons who 
were determined to carry the principles 
of Protestantism to their logical conclu- 
sions. The Puritans complained that the 
Church of England had stopped halfway 
in the work of reformation ; but the Quak- 
ers made the same complaint of the Puri- 
tans. Thereupon the Puritans answered 
the Quakers in the same terms in which 
they themselves had been answered by the 
Churchmen, — in terms of expulsion and 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 55 

prohibition, enforced by fine and imprison- 
ment. The fact is of interest as interpret- 
ing the contention in which Charles and 
Laud had played a part so reprobated by 
the Puritan historians. When we find the 
same part played again upon a smaller 
stage by Endicott and Wilson, we perceive 
that it was no particular fault of either 
Churchman or Puritan, but belonged to 
the time and represented the common mind 
of men. It was the habit of that age to 
think of religion under conditions of uni- 
formity, as we think of the world to-day 
under conditions of gravitation or evolu- 
tion. The notion that the Puritans came 
over here to establish freedom to worship 
God, in the sense in which that phrase is 
understood by us at present, is without 
foundation in fact. They came to escape a 
uniformity which they disliked, in order to 
set up another uniformity of their own 
construction. They had no intention of es- 
tablishing in Massachusetts a free church 
in a free state, which should carry with it 



56 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

a hospitable recognition of dissent. They 
detested dissent. They dealt with Roger 
Williams as the Church of England had 
dealt with John Cotton. When Governor 
Winthrop said to Mrs. Hutchinson, ^* We 
must restrain you from taking this course. 
We are your judges and not you ours. We 
must compel you to it, ' ' every exiled min- 
ister in the company heard an echo of his 
own trial. This consensus of ecclesiastical 
opinion is to be taken into account in our 
judgments of both the Puritans and the 
Churchmen of that time. It is to be re- 
membered in our estimates of James and 
Charles on one side of the sea, and of Win- 
throp and Endicott on the other side. 
They were alike convinced of the essential 
importance of uniformity. 

Against this uniformity, the Quakers op- 
posed themselves. And against the dis- 
senting and disturbing Quaker, the Puri- 
tans in England and New England lifted 
the hard hand of authority. It was while 
Mary Dyer was in the midst of her visit 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 57 

to England that George Fox reckoned that 
there seldom were fewer than a thousand 
Quakers in the English jails. She knew 
that, when she became a Quaker. It was 
probably one of the arguments which at- 
tracted and convinced her. 

The Quakers differed from other Puri- 
tans in their emphasis on simplicity and 
immediacy. 

They proposed to return to the primi- 
tive simplicity of Christian behavior. 
They found themselves in a society which, 
from their point of view, was deplorably 
formalized and secularized. They deter- 
mined to be absolutely honest with them- 
selves and with their neighbors; and as a 
symbol of that honesty, they refused to ad- 
dress a single person with a plural pro- 
noun. They disused the conventions of 
formal courtesy; they wore their hats in 
the presence of princes and magistrates. 
They disdained the passing modes of 
dress ; when George Fox made him a stout 
suit of leather, he intended to wear it in 



58 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

defiance of all fashions to the end of his 
days. They disliked even such stated ar- 
rangements of services as the Puritans had 
retained, disused the sacraments, dis- 
missed the ministers, and prayed not only 
in such words but at such times as the 
Spirit gave them utterance. All this was 
for the sake of simplicity, and it attracted 
people with the unfailing attraction of the 
simple life. 

To this they added the doctrine of imme- 
diacy. Cotton Mather, in the * * Magnalia, ' ' 
is, of course, a prejudiced witness as to 
the teaching of the New England Quakers. 
He wrote in a day of sharp and discourte- 
ous controversy. ** Keader,'' he says, ^* I 
can foretell what usage I shall find among 
the Quakers for this chapter of our Church 
History : for a Worthy Man that writes of 
them has observed, * For Pride and Hypoc- 
rosie and Hellish Revilings against the 
painful Ministers of Christ I know no peo- 
ple that can match them. ' " And he 
quotes from contemporary Quaker pam- 



THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER 59 

pHets a considerable list of the epithets 
which he may expect: such as, ** Thou 
Fiery Fighter and Green-headed Trump- 
eter," ** thou Mountebank priest," ** thou 
Mole, thou Tinker, thou Lizzard, thou Bell 
of no Metal but the tone of a Kettle, thou 
Whirlpool, thou Whirligig, thou Wheelbar- 
row." These are not the conditions of 
weather in which to look for clear skies, 
and to see truth in the serene light of day. 
But when we find Mather, in reprobation, 
saying of the Quakers that ** they made 
themselves to be Christ's as truly as ever 
was Jesus the Son of Mary," that ** the 
whole History of the Gospel they beheld as 
Acted over again every day as Literally as 
it ever was in Palestine," and that ** every 
Day is the Lord's Day," we perceive in his 
opponents the true spirit of the mystic. 
To them religion was a present reality. 
God was in all life, and their communica- 
tion with Him was constant and intimate. 
They believed in Mrs. Hutchinson's dis- 
tinction; they were a Covenant of Grace, 



60 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

and outside lay the world in a Covenant of 
Works. 

Out of this fatal formalism and remote- 
ness from God they purposed to awaken 
the society about them. That was their 
mission. They were possessed, or ob- 
sessed, with the necessity of bearing their 
witness. They were essentially aggres- 
sive. They could not be silent. Herein 
they differed from some of their prede- 
cessors, the mystics, who were content to 
withdraw themselves from the world. 
They were Protestants of the Protestants, 
and protested daily. And this they did in 
ways which were very inconvenient to the 
community. 

The eccentricities of the Quakers have 
been unduly multiplied and magnified by a 
natural process of exaggeration. A few 
of them behaved themselves in so dramatic 
a manner that the things which they did 
got into the general memory, and have 
never been forgotten. And these acts came 
to be regarded as characteristic of the 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 61 

Quakers, the impression being that they 
happened every day. It was only one 
Quaker, however, on a single occasion, who 
walked about the streets having on his head 
a pan of fire and brimstone. Only one 
dressed herself in sackcloth and blackened 
her face and in that prophetic guise pre- 
sented herself in the congregation at serv- 
ice time. Lydia Wardwell and Deborah 
Wilson behaved themselves in a manner 
even more disconcerting, but they had no 
imitators. Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy 
Waugh rose up in meeting and bore their 
emphatic witness to the emptiness of the 
sermon ; they broke some empty bottles by 
banging them together ; one would imagine 
from some writers that it was a part of the 
regular business of the sexton to sweep up 
broken glass from the floor of the meeting- 
house every Sunday morning ; but this was 
a rare occurrence. The Quakers did in- 
terrupt a good many Puritan sermons 
with frank and unsympathetic comments; 
they did rise up a good many times, after 



62 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

the sermon was over, and proceed to ex- 
pound the text in their own way ; they did 
gather crowds about them and preach to 
them in the streets ; being altogether unin- 
structed in theology, they did say things 
which were as erroneous as they were of- 
fensive; they gave criticism the long end 
of the handle. But these were exceptions 
to a general rule of modest and grave de- 
meanor. The unpardonable sin of the 
Quakers was that they refused to agree 
with the Puritans, and they greatly aggra- 
vated the offence by trying to convert the 
Puritans to their own opinion. They were 
mightily in earnest about it, and the Puri- 
tans on their side were mightily in earnest 
also. That is the heart of the situation. 

The first Quakers who came to Massa- 
chusetts arrived in July, 1656. That was 
the year in which George Fox said that 
a thousand Quakers lay in English jails. 
It was a month after a public day of hu- 
miliation appointed by the General Court 
of Massachusetts ** to seek the face of God 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 6S 

in behalf of our native country in refer- 
ence to the abounding of errors, especially 
those of the Ranters and Quakers." Un- 
der these strained conditions came Ann 
Austin and Mary Fisher, for the purpose 
of teaching Quaker doctrine, bringing with 
them a hundred Quaker books. To the 
Puritan mind at that time, this was an im- 
portation of the plague, and the authori- 
ties dealt with it accordingly. Governor 
Endicott was absent, in Salem, but Deputy 
Governor Bellingham encountered the in- 
vaders. He had the missionaries seized 
while yet they were on board the ship, 
searched their bags and boxes, and took 
possession of their books and of their per- 
sons. The books he caused to be burned by 
the common hangman in the market-place 
of Boston ; the Quakers he shut up in jail. 
They were kept in close confinement, not 
suffered to speak nor to be spoken to, pen 
and ink and candle taken from them to 
prevent them from writing, and a board 
nailed across the window to keep anybody 



64 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

from as much as seeing them. After being 
examined for witch marks, they were put 
on board the next ship and sent to the Bar- 
badoes. Endicott, when he came back, said 
that had he been there he would have had 
them whipped, but the authorities after- 
ward took some credit to themselves for 
self-restraint and gentleness. 

Hardly had Ann Austin and Mary Fish- 
er got out of sight of land when there came 
eight missionaries more, four men and 
four women. They were immediately im- 
prisoned, and after eleven weeks were sent 
to England in the same ship which had 
brought them. 

It became plain to the authorities of 
church and state that they were to be beset 
with Quakers, and they proceeded to en- 
act laws by which to defend the colony 
against this peril. ** Whereas, '* they said, 
^' there is a cursed sect of heretics lately 
risen up in the world, which are commonly 
called Quakers, who take upon themselves 
to be immediately sent of God infallibly 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 65 

assisted by the Spirit to speak and write 
blasphemous opinions, despising govern- 
ment and the order of God in church and 
commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, 
reproaching and reviling magistrates and 
ministers, seeking to turn the people from 
the faith and gain proselytes to their per- 
nicious ways, this court doth hereby or- 
der, '^ thus and so: namely, that the cap- 
tain of any vessel bringing Quakers shall 
be fined a hundred pounds; that every 
Quaker coming into this jurisdiction shall 
be forthwith committed to the house of 
correction, soundly whipped at entrance, 
and thereafter kept at hard labor during 
the term of his imprisonment, and with 
lesser penalties for possessing Quaker 
books and defending Quaker opinions. 

The first Quakers to arrive after the pas- 
sage of this law were Ann Burden and 
Mary Dyer. They seem, however, to have 
escaped its severer provisions, for they 
came on business of their own, and not as 
missionaries : Ann Burden to collect some 



66 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

debts remaining from her former resi- 
dence, and Mary Dyer to rejoin her hus- 
band in Ehode Island. 

The next arrivals felt the whip. Mary 
Clark had twenty stripes with a scourge 
of three cords. Christopher Holder, being 
moved of the Lord to go to Salem, and 
speaking a few words in meeting, after the 
sermon, was '' haled back by the hair of 
the head, and his mouth violently stopped 
with a glove and a handkerchief thrust 
thereinto with much fury,'' by one of the 
church members. He and his companion, 
John Copeland, were brought to Boston 
and given thirty stripes apiece. They were 
afterwards kept nine weeks in prison in 
the cold winter without a fire, and then 
banished. Samuel Shattuck, who pulled 
away the hand of the church member 
who was choking Christopher Holder, was 
brought to Boston and laid under bonds to 
have no communication with Quakers, and 
presently was whipped and banished. This 
was the Samuel Shattuck who afterwards, 



THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER 67 

in 1661, had the satisfaction of bringing 
from England the royal decree which for 
the moment opened all jail doors and 
stopped the persecution of the Quakers ; as 
may be read in Whittier's verse, in ^' The 
King's Missive.'' Lawrence Southwick 
and Cassandra his wife, who had lodged 
the Quakers in Salem, aged persons and 
church members, were admonished and 
fined, and ceasing thereafter to attend the 
meetings of the congregation were whipped 
as a warning to others. Continuing obsti- 
nate in their refusal to go to church under 
these conditions, they were repeatedly 
fined till their property was gone; and 
then, for non-payment of church fines, 
their two children, a son and a daughter, 
were seized to be sold as slaves in Virginia 
or the Barbadoes; but happily no ship- 
master could be found to take them. 

A year after the passage of the first law 
against the Quakers, the General Court en- 
acted a second, * ^ as an addition to the late 
order in reference to the coming or bring- 



68 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

ing in any of the cursed sect of Quakers 
into this jurisdiction.'' It was now pro- 
vided that anybody who should lodge a 
.Quaker should be fined for such offence at 
the rate of forty shillings for every hour 
of such entertainment or concealment; 
also, that every Quaker man who after be- 
ing once punished and banished should pre- 
sume to return should have one of his ears 
cut off for the first offence, and for a sec- 
ond offence his other ear, and for a third 
offence should have his tongue bored 
through with a hot iron. Quaker women 
were to be punished with whipping instead 
of the loss of ears, but for a third offence 
they must suffer like the men. 

In May, 1658, a third law ordained that 
every person *' professing any of their 
pernicious ways, by speaking, writing, or 
by meetings on the Lord's Day, or at any 
other time, to strengthen themselves, or to 
seduce others to their diabolical doc- 
trines " shall for every such transgression 
be fined ten shillings. 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 69 

A fourth law, dated October, 1658, affixed 
to the sentence of banishment the provi- 
sion that a return after such expulsion 
should be punished with the pain of death. 
It was according to this law that Mary 
Dyer was hanged. 

These four laws, issued within a space of 
two years, indicate the anxiety of the au- 
thorities. To them the Quakers were sheer 
anarchists, subversive of both government 
and religion. In deporting such persons 
when they appeared in the colony, in ban- 
ishing such as adopted their opinions, and 
in fining and imprisoning such as shel- 
tered them, the Puritans were clearly 
within their rights. This belonged to their 
province as magistrates. That some dif- 
ficulties arose in their own consciences and 
in the minds of their constituents appears 
in the fact that the General Court thought 
it wise to issue a formal vindication of 
themselves. In this document they dealt 
particularly with the matter of banishment 
upon pain of death. They declared that 



70 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

the doctrine of the Quakers was destruc- 
tive to the fundamental truths of religion. 
They showed that the behavior of the 
Quakers was in contradiction to that re- 
spect to magistrates which is commanded 
in the Bible. They cited the example of 
wise Solomon, who, having confined Shimei 
to the city of Jerusalem upon pain of 
death, promptly beheaded him when he 
came out of bounds. This colony, they said, 
is our house; anybody who breaks into it 
may properly be slain in self-defence. If 
in such violent and bold attempt the Quak- 
ers lose their lives, they may thank them- 
selves as the blamable cause and authors 
of their own death. This colony, they 
added, is our family. ^* Who can make 
question but that a man that hath children 
and family ought to preserve them from 
the dangerous company of persons in- 
fected with contagious, noisome and mor- 
tal diseases? and if such persons shall 
offer to intrude into the man's house 
amongst his children and servants, can 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 71 

any doubt but that in such a case the 
father of the family, if otherwise he can- 
not keep them out, may kill them? *' Thus 
they stated their case, calling for approval 
both from common prudence and from 
Holy Scripture. Indeed, they were but 
exercising one of the prerogatives of 
nations. They were keeping the Quak- 
ers out of the colony, as we endeavor 
to exclude undesirable citizens at our 
ports. 

On the other hand, the Quakers in com- 
ing were following the clear guidance of 
the Inward Light. They were within their 
proper province as missionaries. They 
honestly believed that the Puritans were 
in the darkness of ignorance and sin, and 
they came to illuminate them. They felt, 
as the apostles had felt before them, that 
they must obey God rather than man. 
They entered Boston as Paul and Silas en- 
tered Philippi, and if their mission in- 
volved an imprisonment in the inner jail 
and a fastening of their feet in the stocks, 



72 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

they accepted this, after the pattern of the 
apostles, as a part of the day's work. If 
in the delivery of the message which God 
had given them they must face death, that 
also they did gladly, even eagerly, for His 
sake in whose name they spoke. They de- 
serve the commendation of the faithful 
missionary and the praise of the martyr. 
In the noble army of martyrs they stand 
to all time, William Eobinson with St. Po- 
thinus, Mary Dyer with St. Perpetua ; and 
in their company the three whose right 
ears were cut off, the forty or fifty who 
were whipped with knotted cords, and the 
unnumbered others who suffered the spoil- 
ing of their goods. ** Margaret Brew- 
ster,'' says the clerk of the court, ** you 
are to have your clothes stripped off to the 
middle, and to be tied to a cart's tail at the 
South Meeting-house, and to be drawn 
through the town and to receive twenty 
stripes upon your naked body." '' The 
will of the Lord be done," says Margaret 
Brewster, ^ * I am contented. ' ' And in that 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 73 

grave, serene, and Christian manner, so 
spoke they all. 

Thus an irresistible force encountered 
an immovable body. Thus two sacred and 
imperative rights came into collision. 

Of course, the verdict of subsequent his- 
tory has condemned the Puritans. It has 
found them guilty of two serious misun- 
derstandings. They misunderstood hu- 
man nature, and they misunderstood the 
Quakers. 

They were in error as to human nature 
in thinking that the argument of violence 
is of avail against the convictions of con- 
science. For every man who tries to stop 
his neighbor's mouth with a glove and a 
handkerchief, there will be another man to 
pull away his arm; and whippings at carts' 
tails, and even hangings are great, appeal- 
ing arguments. We are so made that the 
nobler spirits among us rise up instinct- 
ively at the sight of such suffering and 
ally themselves with the sufferers. Thus 
it has been since the day when Stephen 



74 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

was stoned and Saul became a Christian. 
The blood of the martyr is the seed of the 
church. The Quakers proved it. The 
effect of the Puritan method was to in- 
crease the Quakers, as the effect of the 
same method at the hands of Queen Mary 
was to increase the Protestants, and the 
effect of the same method at the hands of 
Archbishop Laud was to increase the 
Puritans. This we see clearly, with the 
wisdom which follows the event. 

Also the Puritans were in error as to 
the Quakers and their conception of re- 
ligion and of government. It seemed as 
if a storm of heresy and schism, with hail- 
stones and coals of fire, were beating upon 
Protestant Christendom from all points of 
the compass at the same time. Every ship 
which sailed into Boston Bay brought the 
news of the birth of a new ism. The blessed 
liberty for which the reformers had con- 
tended had fallen into license. The most 
essential doctrines of religion, the most 
sacred institutions of society, were set at 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 75 

naught. The colonists were not only anx- 
ious but nervous. And then the Quaker 
missionaries came. That the Puritans 
should have failed to understand them was 
inevitable. To-day the immediate asso- 
ciation of the name of " Quaker '' is with 
peace, and quietness, and serenity of soul. 
Nothing could have been further from the 
minds of the neighbors of Mary Fisher or 
of Mary Dyer. 

Mary Dyer had now been living in Rhode 
Island for ten years. Under the large tol- 
erance established by Roger Williams, that 
was a comfortable colony for Quakers. 
But the Quakers were not contented to be 
comfortable. In June, 1659, William Rob- 
inson and Marmaduke Stevenson were 
moved of the Lord to pay a visit to Boston, 
and Nicholas Davis and Patience Scott 
went with them. Patience was eleven 
years of age. She came of good, stout, 
non-conforming stock, her mother hav- 
ing been a sister of Anne Hutchinson. 
Mrs. Scott had already experienced the 



76 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

rigors of the law. *^A Mother of many 
Children, one that had lived with her Hus- 
band, of an unblameable Conversation, and 
a Grave, Sober and Ancient Woman, and 
of good Breeding," she had come lip to 
Boston upon the occasion of the cutting off 
of three right ears, and speaking her mind 
with some righteous freedom concerning 
that matter had been thrown into prison, 
and given ten stripes with a three-fold 
knotted whip, and promised that if she 
came again she should be hanged. This 
did not deter her from sending her little 
daughter on the perilous errand of bear- 
ing witness against a persecuting spirit. 
Davis came on business, seeking opportu- 
nity to barter corn with the heathen. Eob- 
inson had been a merchant in London; 
Stevenson had been a ploughman in York- 
shire,. ** I was at the plough," says Ste- 
venson, ** in the East-parts of Yorkshire, 
in Old-England, and as I walked after the 
plough I was filled with the Love and Pres- 
ence of the Living God, which did Eavish 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 77 

my Heart when I felt it; and as I stood 
a little still, with my Heart and Mind 
stayed on the Lord, the Word of the Lord 
came unto me in a still, small Voice, which 
I did hear perfectly, saying to me in the 
Secret of my Heart and Conscience, 'I 
have ordained thee a Prophet unto the 
Nations.' '' 

These four being immediately put in 
prison, Mary Dyer was moved of the Lord 
to visit them, and was seized and impris- 
oned with them. There they lay for three 
months until the 12th of September. On 
that day they were brought before the 
court. The child was dismissed ; the others 
were given two days to get out of the com- 
monwealth. Should they be found within 
the jurisdiction of the court after the lapse 
of forty-eight hours, they were to be put 
to death. Thereupon, Nicholas Davis and 
Mary Dyer departed, one to Plymouth and 
the'*other to Ehode Island; but Robinson 
and Stevenson were '^constrained in the 
love and power of the Lord" not to depart 



78 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

but to try the bloody laws unto the 
death. 

Then, from the four winds, zealous Quak- 
ers started for Boston. First came Chris- 
topher Holder, and was at once thrust into 
prison. On the 8th of October, came Mary 
Dyer to visit him, and was imprisoned also. 
After them came Hope Clifton, and Mary 
Scott, and Eobert Harper, and Daniel 
Gold, and Henry King, and Hannah 
Phelps, and Mary Trask, and Margaret 
Smith, and Provided Southwick. On the 
13th, "William Eobinson and Marmaduke 
Stevenson returned, and with Mrs. Alice 
Cowland, ** who came to bring linen 
wherein to wrap the dead Bodies of those 
who were to Suffer. ' ' The roll of linen in 
the arms of Alice Cowland evidenced the 
grim spirit in which the principals in this 
tragedy entered upon their parts. ^ * These 
all came together, ' ' says the Quaker chron- 
icle, '' in the Moving and Power of the 
Lord, as one, to look your Bloody Laws in 
the Face, and to accompany those who 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 79 

should suffer by them.*' They were bent 
upon a perfectly definite purpose, to break 
the law into a thousand pieces by endur- 
ing its hideous penalty. They desired to 
show to all good people what manner of 
law it was, whereby the enormities of the 
reign of Bloody Mary were enacted by 
Puritan ministers and magistrates in 
Massachusetts. 

This desire was promptly gratified. On 
the 19th of October, Eobinson and Ste- 
venson and Mary Dyer were had before the 
court and demanded why they came again, 
being banished upon pain of death. They 
replied that the ground and cause of this 
coming was of the Lord and in obedience 
to Him. The governor, manifestly reluc- 
tant to proceed, sent them back to prison. 
But the next day was a prayer day, with 
a sermon by John Wilson. He was the 
pastor whom Anne Hutchinson had in- 
stinctively detested ; when she saw that he 
was to be the preacher of a Sunday morn- 
ing, she had on several occasions risen up 



80 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

at the announcement of the text and 
marched out of the meeting-house. He had 
assaulted Obadiah Holmes, the Baptist, in 
the court-room, striking him in the face, 
and cursing him in the name of Jesus. He 
had flung Quaker books into the hangman's 
fire, saying, ^^From the devil they came, 
to the devil they go." He had declared 
that the best way to convert the Quakers 
was to kill them, drawing his hand across 
his throat. It was the misfortune of the 
commonwealth that this man, coarse and 
hard and malignantly orthodox, was in a 
position of influence and authority. He 
preached an appropriate sermon. After 
the sermon and the service were ended, 
the governor sat again upon the judgment 
seat, and in a faint voice, as a man sick 
either in body or at heart, spoke to this 
effect: *^We have made many laws, and 
endeavored by several ways to keep you 
from us, and neither whipping nor impris- 
onment, nor banishment upon pain of death 
will keep you from among us. I desire not 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 81 

your death. ' * Nevertheless, he pronounced 
their sentence: *^You shall be had back 
to the place from whence you came, and 
from thence to the place of execution, to 
be hanged on the gallows till you are 
dead.'' Robinson asked leave to read a 
statement, but was refused. Stevenson 
was permitted to make a brief speech. 
Mary Dyer said: '^ The will of the Lord 
be done.'' *^ Take her away, marshal," 
ordered the governor. ^' Yea," she an- 
swered, ** joyfully shall I go." 

During the week which intervened be- 
tween the sentence and the execution so 
much excitement appeared among the peo- 
ple, and so many crowded about the prison 
windows, that a military guard was set 
against a possible rescue and release. On 
the day appointed, after prayers, with beat 
of drums and escort of soldiers, the three 
condemned persons were taken to the Com- 
mon. So great was the crowd that, after 
the execution was over, the bridge which 
then connected Boston with the mainland 



82 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

at the North End, broke with their weight. 
The Quakers would have addressed them, 
but as often as they tried to speak, the 
drums were beaten. Mr. Wilson derided 
them, shaking his fist in their faces, say- 
ing *' Shall such folks as you come before 
authority with your hats on! " But the 
three were already uplifted in spirit above 
the contentions of the world. As they came 
on, hand in hand, Mary Dyer between the 
two men, she said, ^^It is an hour of the 
greatest joy I can enjoy in this world. No 
eye can see, no ear can hear, no tongue 
can speak, no heart can understand, the 
sweet incomes and refreshings of the spirit 
of the Lord which now I enjoy.'' The gal- 
lows was a stout elm, traditionally the 
'' Great Tree," which, till 1876, stood be- 
side the Frog Pond. The prisoner, having 
the noose about his neck, climbed by a lad- 
der to a branch, and the ladder was pulled 
away. Thus died William Eobinson, say- 
ing, **I suffer for Christ, in whom I lived 
and for whom I die." Thus died Marma- 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 83 

duke Stevenson, saying, ** Be it known to 
all this day that we suffer not as evil-doers, 
but for conscience sake/' 

Mary Dyer sat at the foot of the tree, 
beholding the martyrdom of her friends. 
Then her arms were bound, her skirts were 
tied about her feet, her face was covered 
with Mr. "Wilson's handkerchief, and she 
was lifted to the ladder. And there stand- 
ing, having suffered already the severest 
pangs of death, having died to the world, 
she was suddenly informed that she was re- 
prieved. Her son in Ehode Island had 
petitioned for her release, and the petition 
had been granted. She was to be sent 
home. This fruitless agony of expectation 
had been privately ordered by the court 
for the sake of its impression on her mind. 

For a moment Mary Dyer knew not what 
to say or do. *^ Waiting on the Lord to 
know His pleasure is so sudden a change, 
having given herself up to die.'' But she 
had no choice. She was taken back to 
prison, whence she wrote a letter refusing 



84 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

to accept lier life. The next day, slie was 
put on horseback and conveyed out of the 
commonwealth. She spent the winter on 
Shelter Island, 

** Where, ocean-walled and wiser than his age, 
The lord of Shelter scorned the bigots' rage." 

There her name, with those of others who 
found like shelter on that island, is in- 
scribed on a memorial stone erected by 
Professor Horsford. She avoided her fam- 
ily, not for lack of love, but that she might 
not be prevented by them from her firm de- 
termination. When the spring was green, 
she made her way secretly to Providence. 
In the middle of May, she presented her- 
self with all boldness in Boston. 

The law of banishment on pain of death 
was still in force. The martyrdom of Eob- 
inson and Stevenson had not availed for its 
repeal. The authorities had justified their 
course in a public statement, and the peo- 
ple had accepted the situation. The great 
work was still to be done. The hideousness 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 85 

of the law was still to be demonstrated. 
Mary Dyer went to demonstrate it. She 
was under no illusion. She knew by awful 
experience that the court would keep its 
word. She had died once, and in the name 
of God and of the cause and truth for which 
she stood, she went to die again. 

*^Are you the same Mary Dyer,'' asked 
the governor, '' that was here before?" — 
^^ I am the same Mary Dyer that was 
here at the last General Court." — '' You 
will own yourself a Quaker, will you 
not ! ' ' — ' ' I own myself to be reproachfully 
so called." — ^' Sentence was passed upon 
you," said the governor, ^^at the last Gen- 
eral Court, and now likewise. You must 
return to the prison, and there remain till 
to-morrow at nine o 'clock ; then thence you 
must go to the gallows, and there be hanged 
till you are dead." — ''This is no more," 
said Mary Dyer, ''than what thou saidst 
before." — "But now," said the governor, 
"it is to be executed. Therefore, prepare 
yourself to-morrow at nine o'clock." — "I 



86 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

came/' said she, ^4ii obedience to the will 
of God at the last General Court, desiring 
you to repeal your unrighteous laws of 
banishment on pain of death; and that 
same is my work now, and earnest desire, 
although I told you that if you refuse to 
repeal them, the Lord would send others 
of His servants to witness against them.'' 
**Away with her!" cried the governor, 
*'Away with her!" 

Thus she had her will and offered her- 
self, — our New England Iphigeneia, — a 
sacrifice for the common good. Even as 
she stood upon the ladder, they told her 
that she should be set free if she would go 
home and stay there. But she would ac- 
cept no deliverance. *^Nay," she said, **I 
cannot ; for in obedience to the will of the 
Lord God I came, and in His will I abide 
faithful unto death." In the Friends' 
Eecords of Portsmouth, Ehode Island, they 
made this entry: *'Mary Dyer, the wife 
of William Dyer of Newport in Ehode Isl- 
and; She was put to death at the Town 



THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 87 

of Boston with ye like cruel hand as the 
martyrs were in Queen Mary's time, and 
then buried upon ye 31 day of ye 3' mo. 
1660." 

The persecution of the Quakers in Mas- 
sachusetts extended over a term of twenty- 
one years, beginning with the deportation 
of Ann Austin and Mary Fisher in 1656, 
and ending with the flogging of Margaret 
Brewster and others in 1677. In addition 
to the penalties of fine and imprisonment, 
it presented to the Christian community 
the spectacle of some fifty public whip- 
pings, many of the sufferers being women, 
in some instances the victims being 
dragged through the streets of towns at 
the tails of carts, the hangman beating 
them as they went. Three Quakers had 
their right ears cut off, four were hanged. 
The result was the abolition of the Puri- 
tan theocracy. Established in the enthusi- 
asm of high ideals, maintained by men of 
conscience in the fear of God, excluding 
from the franchise of the commonwealth 



88 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 

all who are not members of the church, 
it set its face toward a realization of the 
kingdom of heaven. But it broke the su- 
preme divine law of brotherly love, and 
fell thereby into the iniquities of persecu- 
tion. And it came to an end in consequence. 
The death of Mary Dyer, with other con- 
temporary cruelties, was brought to the 
attention of the King. While he was read- 
ing the report, the news arrived of the 
hanging of William Leddra. In came Ed- 
ward Burrough, the Quaker, and said to the 
King, ^^ There is a vein of innocent blood 
opened in thy dominions which if it be not 
stopped, will over-run all." The King 
said, * * I will stop that vein. ' ' And he did. 
There were floggings after that, but no 
more hangings. Liberty of conscience and 
freedom of honest speech were no longer 
punishable in Massachusetts with banish- 
ment on pain of death. That was the su- 
preme achievement of the martyrdom of 
Mary Dyer. 



THE ADVENTURES OF 
CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 



Ill 

THE ADVENTURES OF 
CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 

THE baptismal register of Chorley 
Church, in Lancashire, contains a 
leaf which nobody can read. The entries 
which precede and which follow are plain 
enough : ink was good in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. But this blurred leaf presents so worn 
and dim an aspect that they have reason on 
their side who claim that fingers more 
hasty and tangible than those of the hand 
of time have touched it. It looks as if the 
records of 1584 and 1585 had been inten- 
tionally rubbed out. It is a common guess 
that one of the names thus unhappily 
erased was that of Myles Standish. 

At all events the name is gone, and with 
it has disappeared the necessary proof to 
establish the claims of the Standishes of 
America to the pleasant possessions of the 

91 



92 THE ADVENTURES OF 

Standishes of Standish. That such a claim 
has reasonable foundation appears in 
Myles Standish's will, in which ^^I give," 
he says, '^unto my son and heir apparent, 
Alexander Standish, all my lands as heir 
apparent by lawful descent in Ormistick 
Bousconge, Wrightington, Maudsley, New- 
burrow, Cranston and in the Isle of Man, 
and given to mee as right heire by lawful 
descent, but surreptitiously detained from 
mee, my grandfather being a second or 
younger brother from the house of Stan- 
dish of Standish." 

The house of Standish was of good an- 
tiquity, and had possessed its Lancashire 
estates for centuries. The origin of the 
name is involved in the obscurity which 
is unfortunately common to origins. There 
is a rumor that in the uneffaced pages of 
the Chorley register is the ancient name 
of Milo Standanaught ; Milo being plainly 
from the Latin for *^ soldier," and Stand- 
anaught meaning ^ ^ Stand-at-no thing. ' ' 
And there are those who guess that from 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 93 

these sturdy syllables came the name of 
the Puritan captain. On the other hand, 
the armorial bearings of the family are 
' ' an azure shield with three standishes ar- 
gent"; and the word '* standish/' thus 
used, is simply stand-dish. In the diction- 
aries this dish is used for pens and ink: 
Dean Swift speaks of his silver standish. 
But in the London Times report of Queen 
Victoria's coronation mention is made of 
standishes upon the altar, meaning silver 
plates or patens. Thus they appear upon 
the family shield. 

Standish, however derived, was the 
name. Thurston de Standish, who was liv- 
ing in 1222, is the eldest recognizable an- 
cestor; his son was Ealph, and Ealph's 
sons, living in 1306, were Hugh and Jordan. 
These two divided the estates between 
them, and their families became respec- 
tively the Standishes of Duxbury and the 
Standishes of Standish. The family houses 
of Standish and Duxbury are pictured 
in Johnson's ** Exploits of Myles Stan- 



94. THE ADVENTURES OF 

dish." They are dignified, large, square 
buildings, surrounded by trees and exten- 
sive grounds. Standish Hall is reproduced 
from a photograph and may show the place 
as it is at present. The house is connected 
by a timbered corridor with a chapel which 
has a cross at the gable. Duxbury Hall 
is copied from a painting, without date; 
deer are grazing on the lawn, and a group 
of gentlemen on horseback are standing by 
the porch. 

The two branches of the family chose 
different sides in the religious contention 
which presently disturbed the land. The 
Standishes of Duxbury accepted the Prot- 
estant Eeformation; the Standishes of 
Standish continued in the unreformed 
religion. 

The Catholic Standishes took a lively 
part in the disturbances of the time. Henry 
Standish, a Franciscan friar and bishop 
of St. Asaph, sided with Queen Katherine 
in the matter of the divorce. And when 
the contention between the reformed and 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 95 

the unreformed religions was renewed late 
in the seventeenth century, in the time of 
James the Second, the Standishes of Stan- 
dish were enthusiastic Jacobites. It was 
at Standish Hall that the ^^ Lancashire 
Plot '' was made for the King's restoration. 
This connection of the family with the 
Eoman religion has since given rise to an 
interesting theory that Myles Standish was 
a Eoman Catholic. It would be pleasant 
to have this theory confirmed. That 
Standish was not a member of the Plym- 
outh church is commonly asserted. Dr. 
Jeremy Belknap, in his ^ ^American Biogra- 
phy, ' ' says in so many words, though with- 
out reference to authority, that he was 
' * not a member of their church ' ' ; and he 
presently quotes from the manuscript of 
the Eev. William Hubbard's " History of 
New England,'' " He had been bred a sol- 
dier in the Low Countries, and had never 
entered into the school of Christ, or of John 
the Baptist." This, indeed, may mean no 
more than that the writer did not approve 



96 THE ADVENTUEES OF 

of the captain's martial activity; for lie 
adds, * ^ or, if ever he was there, he had for- 
got his first lessons, to offer violence 
to no man/' Still, it is more likely 
that he intended to make apology for 
Standi sh on the ground that he was 
not a church member. That was twenty 
years after Standish's death. Hubbard 
was, therefore, a contemporary; and, 
though he lived at Ipswich, he would not 
be likely to be mistaken in regard to an 
ecclesiastical position so exceptional, at 
that time, as Standish's. 

Accordingly, there appear two facts: 
first, that Standish's family was of the 
Eoman Catholic faith; and, secondly, that 
Standish himself did not belong to 
the Puritan Church. Was he a Eoman 
Catholic? 

It is certain that Myles Standish fought 
in the Netherlands on the Protestant side 
in a war which was essentially a war of 
religion. 

It is certain that he cast in his lot with 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 97 

the Puritan emigrants, and was ever 
trusted and esteemed by them. They hated 
Papists. Bradford, in his ** History of 
Plymouth Plantation, ' ' shows how they felt 
even about the Church of England, how 
they detested ** ye ceremonies, and serv- 
ise books, and other popish and unchristian 
stuffe.'' 

It is certain that Myles Standish's li- 
brary, as appears in the inventory made at 
his death, was as Protestant as a lot of 
books can be. It was like the collection of 
an orthodox country parson, — Calvin's In- 
stitutes, Preston's Sermons, Burrough's 
*^ Earthly-Mindedness and Christian Con- 
tentment," Dod on the Lord's Supper, a 
reply to Dr. Cotton on Baptisms, ' ' Sparkes 
Against Heresie," Ball on ^' Faith," " Na- 
ture and Grace in Conflict, ' ' together with 
*' 3 old Bibles," not one of them in the 
Douay version. It is true that some of these 
excellent books may have been presented to 
him in Leyden by Pastor Kobinson, or in 
Plymouth by Elder Brewster, for the im- 



98 THE ADVENTURES OF 

proving of his mind and the saving of his 
soul; but it is more likely that he bought 
them himself. That was what he liked to 
read. There is evidence on those shelves of 
a serious disposition and a religious spirit, 
but there is no smallest trace of any di- 
vergence from the opinions common in 
Plymouth. Not one of these books could 
have stood consistently upon a Eoman 
Catholic shelf. 

We may reasonably infer from such 
facts as these that Myles Standish, who was 
by family a Eoman Catholic, by baptism, 
in Chorley Church, an Episcopalian, and 
by association a Puritan, was a person of 
independent mind who did not further com- 
mit himself. That he was a Eoman Cath- 
olic, either in practice or opinion, during 
his life in Plymouth, there is not the least 
ground for belief. 

The life of Standish is divided into two 
almost exactly equal portions by the sail- 
ing of the Mayfloiuer. Born, so near as we 
can tell, in 1584, he died in 1656. The year 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 99 

1620 is midway between these dates pre- 
cisely. Of the first part of his career 
scarce anything is known. Morton, in his 
'' New England's Memorial,'' tells us all 
that he knows about it in half a sentence. 
** In his younger time," he says, '' he went 
over into the Low Countries, and was a 
soldier there, and came acquainted with 
the church at Leyden." 

The lad became a soldier, naturally. The 
surreptitious detaining of his inheritance 
indicates family dissensions, and it may 
have been the discomfort or compulsion of 
them which drove him from home. He was 
probably glad to go. It was a day of ad- 
venture. Men who had no cause for which 
to fight at home went abroad seeking occu- 
pation for their swords. It was Sir Philip 
Sidney who said, " Whenever you hear of 
a good war, go to it " ; and he had himself 
followed his own advice, going into the 
Netherlands for the joy of the fray. Young 
Standish's mind would respond to this 
gallant counsel : to the wars he went. 



100 THE ADVENTURES OP 

Spain and Holland were still fighting. 
In 1584, the year of Myles 's birth, William 
the Silent was assassinated. In 1604, Eliz- 
abeth having died, and James having suc- 
ceeded her upon the throne of England, 
the English forces which had been helping 
Holland were withdrawn. As Standi sh 
was at that time but twenty years of age, it 
is plain that he had not seen any extended 
service. The most notable military event of 
that time was the siege of Ostend, 
which came to an end in that year. It is 
a fair guess that the young soldier had a 
part in that foolish tragedy. Of his * * three 
muskets, four carbines, two small guns, 
one fowling piece, a sword, a cutlass and 
three belts," some, it is likely, were used 
in this campaign, and were tried against 
the Spaniards before they were directed 
against the Indians. It was probably 
at this time, also, that he purchased 
his copies of *' Cesar's Commentary s ' ' 
and ** Bariff's Artillery,'' which he could 
hardly have desired for counsel in his 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 101 

dealings with the Massachusetts or the 
Narragansetts. 

Two swords are still shown, one in Bos- 
ton and the other in Plymouth, which are 
said to have belonged to him. The Plym- 
outh sword, in Pilgrim Hall, has an 
Arabic inscription on its blade, which car- 
ries its history out of the bounds of knowl- 
edge into the camps of that Moslem enemy 
who, even in Standish's time, was men- 
acing and molesting Europe. It may easily 
have belonged to some pirate Turk, taken 
in his ship in the English Channel, and 
have been sold by its captor. Myles prob- 
ably bought it at second-hand. Unlike his 
predecessor. Captain John Smith, he had 
no personal encounters with men whose 
speech was Arabic. 

The Boston sword, which is in the pos- 
session of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, is supposed by Mr. Winsor to be 
the one which Alexander Standish inher- 
ited, and was handed down to Alexander's 
grandson, John Standish, of Plymouth, 



102 THE ADVENTURES OF 

from whom it was borrowed on a training- 
day by a careless neighbor who never car- 
ried it back. In 1849, Mr. Winsor was in- 
formed by Mr. Moses Standish, of Boston, 
that he had seen in the house of this Cap- 
tain John Standish a coat of mail which 
had belonged to his great-grandfather. 
* * It was a cloth garment, being thickly in- 
terwoven with a metallic wire,so as to make 
it extremely durable, and scarcely penetra- 
ble. The suit was complete, including a 
helmet and breastplate." 

In 1604, when England and Spain pro- 
fessed to be friends, it seemed as if there 
would be no further use for these weapons, 
offensive or defensive. In 1609, however, 
two events took place which determined 
where young Standish 's taste for war 
should find gratification. One was the es- 
tablishment of a general peace. In the 
West of Europe, though contending ar- 
mies. Catholic and Protestant, made a truce 
of twelve years, in the East of Europe, 
other contending armies, Christian and 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 103 

Moslem, agreed to fight no more for almost 
twice that length of time. Thus Standish's 
profession offered him no future in Eu- 
rope ; no princes would buy his sword. The 
other event was the removal from Amster- 
dam to Leyden of a little group of English 
Puritan refugees. Thus, in this year or 
later, Standish came into acquaintance 
with Eobinson and Brewster, and with 
Carver and Bradford and Winslow. When 
the Puritans began presently to look across 
the sea, he naturally bethought himself of 
Walter Kaleigh and Lyon Gardner and 
John Smith and Ferdinando Gorges, com- 
panions in arms with him, who, being in 
his condition, without employment, had 
found occupation and adventure in the 
new world. He cast in his lot with the 
emigrating congregation. 

The Puritans had, indeed, found Leyden 
' ' a fair and bewtif ul citie, and of a sweete 
situation^ ' ' and had especially appreciated 
the advantages of living in the neighbor- 
hood of its university. They knew the per- 



104 THE ADVENTUEES OF 

ils of an untried climate. ' ' For that they 
should be liable,'' they said, ^* to famine, 
and nakedness, and ye want, in a manner, 
of all things. The change of aire, diate, 
and drinking of water would infecte their 
bodies with sore sickness and greevous dis- 
eases. And also those which should escape 
or overcome these difficulties, should yett be 
in continuall danger of ye salvage people, 
who are cruel, barberous and most trech- 
erous, being most furious in their rage and 
merciles where they overcome: nor being 
content only to kill and take away life, but 
delight to tormente men in ye most bloodie 
manner that may be; fleeing some alive 
with ye shells of fishes, cutting of ye mem- 
bers and joyntes of others peesmeale, and, 
broiling on ye coles, eate ye collops of their 
flesh in their sight whilst they live: with 
other cruelties horrible to be related." 

This was not a cheerful prospect. But 
the truce between Holland and Spain was 
nearly over, — the twelve years ending in 
1621, — and the Indians, they may well have 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 105 

thought, could not be much worse than the 
Spaniards. Other reasons, also, impelled 
them. They desired to have a country of 
their own, where they might bring up their 
children to be religious English folk. They 
determined to seek an abiding place in the 
wild lands across the sea. 

In the meantime, Myles Standish had 
been getting married. Somewhere, — tradi- 
tion says, in the Isle of Man, — he had found 
a young person named Eose, who was will- 
ing, under the safe covert of his protec- 
tion, to brave the possible horrors of New 
England. Standish was now thirty-six 
years old, being arrived at the middle year 
of his life. Longfellow tells how he 
looked — 



** Short of stature he was, hut strongly built and 

athletic, 
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles 

and sinews of iron ; 
Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard 

was already 
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes 

in November." 



106 THE ADVENTURES OP 

That is as near as we can come to it. He 
was certainly short of stature. Master 
Morton, of Merrymount, in his * ^ New Eng- 
land Canaan," wrote satirical descriptions 
of the colonists, and called Captain Stan- 
dish, * * Captaine Shrimpe. " * * Had we been 
at home in onr full number," he says, re- 
counting how Standish invaded and ar- 
rested the mischievous household, we 
'' would have given Captaine Shrimpe (a 
quondam Drummer) such a welcome as 
would have made him wish for a Drumme 
as bigg as Diogenes' tubb, that he might 
have crept into it out of sight." So, too, 
the Indian Pecksuot told him, ** Though 
he were a great Captain, yet he was but a 
little Man." William Hubbard, also, al- 
ready quoted, said, ** A little chimney is 
soon fired : so was the Plymouth captain, a 
man of very little stature, yet of a very hot 
and hasty temper." 

There is no authentic portrait of Stan- 
dish, though the picture in the ' * Standishes 
of America ' ' suits the part well. It shows 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 107 

a sturdy person, in the stiff ruff of the pe- 
riod, with full black beard, and a look of 
stout determination in his eyes. But the 
compiler tells us that nothing is definitely 
known about this portrait prior to the year 
1812. It is true that Standish was in Eng- 
land in the year 1625, when the picture is 
dated. But the times were not such as to 
suggest the painting of portraits: money 
was uncommonly scarce, and London had 
the plague. The Pilgrims did not sit for 
their pictures. The walls of their houses 
did not present suitable backgrounds for 
the hanging of paintings in oil. 

** Wednesday, the sixth of September, 
the wind coming East North East, a fine 
small gale, we loosed from Plymouth [the 
English Plymouth], having been kindly 
entertained and courteously used by divers 
friends there dwelling : and after many dif- 
ficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by 
God's Providence, upon the 9th of Novem- 
ber following, by break of day, we espied 
land ; which we deemed to be Cape Cod, and 



108 THE ADVENTURES OF 

so afterward it proved." The year was 
1620, and the dates, being ** old style," 
need to be increased by ten to bring 
them into proper position in our present 
calendar. 

Two days later, after perilous en- 
counters with '* dangerous shoals and 
roaring breakers " in a vain attempt to 
make what is now the harbor of New York, 
they dropped anchor near the end of Long 
Point and not far from the present village 
of Provincetown. They found themselves 
in a circling bay ^ ^ compassed about to the 
very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassa- 
fras, and other sweet wood, ' ^ and so capa- 
cious that therein *' a thousand sail of 
ships may safely ride." The water, how- 
ever, was so shallow that they could not 
come near the shore by *' three-quarters 
of an English mile." They had to wade 
** a bow-shot or two " in *' going aland "; 
thus getting such coughs and colds as 
made them ill-prepared for the rigors 
which awaited them. 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 109 

In the cabin of the Mayflower ^ lying thus 
at Provincetown, they drew up a notable 
compact in which they agreed to combine 
themselves together into a civil body poli- 
tic ; and by virtue thereof to make laws to 
which they promised all due submission 
and obedience. The sixth name signed to 
this document was that of Captain Myles 
Standish. 

Thus the new life began, under Novem- 
ber skies. ^' Being thus passed ye vast 
ocean," writes Bradford, in his history, 
*' they had now no friends to wellcome 
them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh 
their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses or 
much less townes, to repaire too, to 
seek for succore. . . . And for the season, 
it was winter, and they that know ye win- 
ters of that countrie know them to be sharp 
and violent, and subject to cruell and 
feirce storms, dangerous to travill to 
known places, much more to such an 
unknown coast/' 

The first task was exploration, and the 



110 THE ADVENTURES OF 

first mention of Standish is as the leader 
of an expedition. ^ ^ And so with cautions, 
directions and instructions, sixteen men 
were sent out, with every man his musket, 
sword and corselet, under the conduct of 
Captain Myles Standish.'' They ordered 
themselves in ** a Single File '' and 
marched for a mile by the sea, without 
meeting with an adventure, when, at last, 
they saw ^ve or six persons with a dog 
coming towards them, who, when they es- 
pied this army of invasion, ran into the 
woods, whistling the dog after them. Stan- 
dish and his men followed these citizens, 
but were not able to overtake them, for 
they " ran away with might and main." 
Thus they went for ten miles, following 
their footprints. Then it grew dark, and 
they built a camp-fire, and setting a guard, 
bestowed themselves for the night. The 
next day they went on through the woods 
making their way through boughs and 
bushes which, as they reported, tore their 
very armor in pieces. About ten in the 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 111 

morning, being then in what is now Truro, 
they found a spring, '^ of which," they 
said, " we were heartily glad, and sot us 
down and drank our first New England 
water with as much delight as ever we 
drank drink in all our lives.'' That day 
they found some planks laid together, 
where a house had been, and a ship's ket- 
tle, ^* brought out of Europe," and nearby 
in sand-heaps a store of corn, '' some yel- 
low, and some red, and some mixed with 
blue ; which was a very goodly sight. ' ' Of 
this they helped themselves, filling the ket- 
tle and their pockets. So they made their 
way back to the ship, with some difficulty, 
getting lost in the woods, and seemed to 
their companions as fairly laden as the 
men from Eshcol. Eight months after, 
they met the owners of this corn and paid 
them for it. This find of corn they called 
the First Discovery. 

On Wednesday, the 6th (16th) of De- 
cember, another exploring expedition, con- 
sisting of ten men and led, as before, by 



112 THE ADVENTURES OF 

Captain Standish, started in search of a 
proper place for the settlement. The 
weather was very cold, the water freezing 
on their clothes and making them ** like 
coats of iron." They went by water, in 
the shallop, landing now and then and 
making expeditions into the country. In 
the middle of the second night, as they lay 
on the shore by their fire, they heard *^ a 
great and hideous cry," and shot off a 
couple of muskets, at which the noise 
ceased, and they judged it had been made 
by wolves or foxes. But about five o'clock 
the next morning, having had prayers and 
preparing breakfast, the cry sounded 
again, and one of the company came run- 
ning in, shouting, ** They are men! In- 
dians! Indians!" And the sentinel was 
followed by a flight of arrows. The arms 
had already been carried to the boat, but 
Standish had a snap-lance ready — a gun 
with a flint lock — and he made a shot, and 
presently the others were ready; the In- 
dians meanwhile keeping up their dreadful 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 113 

cry, ^'"Woach!" they screamed, ^* Woach! 
Ha ! Ha ! Hach ! Woach ! * ' — sounding not 
unlike a college yell. Finally their leader 
' * gave an extraordinary cry and away they 
went all." None of the Englishmen had 
been hit by the discharge of arrows, nor 
do they record having wounded any Indian. 
They followed the retreating savages a 
little space, and then shonted ' ' all together, 
two several times ; and shot off a couple of 
muskets; and so returned. This we did 
that they might see that we were not afraid 
of them nor discouraged." Thus ended 
the First Encounter. 

Then, giving God thanks, they set sail 
again, looking for a harbor to which the 
ship 's pilot had directed them ; he had been 
there once, he said, and the savages had 
stolen his harpoon; he called it Thievish 
Harbor. Now it began to snow and rain 
and blow, and the sea was very rough. The 
rudder broke; the mast was split in three 
pieces. At last, after a day of peril, they 
*' fell upon a place of sandy ground " on 



114. THE ADVENTURES OF 

the shore of a small island. There they 
stayed till morning, and the next day, be- 
ing Sunday, they said their prayers and 
sang their hymns, on Clark's Island, as we 
call it. '^ On Monday they sounded ye 
harbor, and f ounde it fitt for shipping ; and 
marched into ye land & found diverse corn- 
fields & little running brooks, a place (as 
they supposed) fitt for situation; at least 
it was ye best they could find; and ye 
season and their present necessities, made 
them glad to accepte of it. So they returned 
to their shipp again with this news to 
ye rest of their people, which did much 
comforte their harts." 

Thus is the Landing recorded, without 
adjective or exclamation. The date was 
December 11, or, by our reckoning, the 
21st, piously kept as '' Forefathers' Day." 
No rock is mentioned, but as there is no 
other rock in the immediate neighborhood 
of their getting ashore, there is no reason 
to doubt that they set their feet on the 
boulder of tradition. It has been debated 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 115 

wliether Jolin Alden or Mary Chilton was 
the first to land; but that event was later, 
when the Mayfioiver followed the shallop's 
course into Plymouth Bay. Let us hazard 
the conjecture that Myles Standish, being 
the leader of this expedition, was himself 
the first to stand on '' the threshold of 
the United States." 

The First Encounter had made the pil- 
grims thankful that they had a military 
man among them. They were now expectant 
of an Indian attack. Among their domes- 
tic and religious preparations for the win- 
ter they did not neglect those important 
and, as they thought, necessary precau- 
tions for which Standish was responsible. 
After two months of anxiety, during which 
they sometimes saw great smokes of Indian 
fires, but never an Indian, it happened at 
the end of February, that ^' Captain Myles 
Standish and Francis Cooke, being at work 
in the woods, coming home left their tools 
behind them, but before they returned 
they were taken away by the savages." 



116 THE ADVENTURES OP 

The next day, *^ in the morning," says the 
record in Mourt's ** Relation," **we called 
a meeting for the establishment of military 
orders among ourselves; and we chose 
Myles Standish onr captain, and gave him 
authority of command in affairs. And as 
we were in consultation hereabouts, two 
savages presented themselves upon the top 
of a hill, over against our plantation, about 
a quarter of a mile and less, and made 
signs unto us to come unto them : we like- 
wise made signs unto them to come unto 
us. Whereupon we armed ourselves 
and made ready, and sent two over the 
brook towards them, to-wit. Captain Stan- 
dish and Stevens Hopkins, who went to- 
wards them. Only one of them had a mus- 
ket, which they laid down on the ground in 
their sight, in sign of peace and to parley 
with them. But the savages would not 
tarry their coming. A noise of a great 
many more was heard behind the hill ; but 
no more came in sight. This led us to 



CAPTAIN IVIYLES STANDISH 117 

plant our great ordnance in places most 
convenient. ' ' 

Meanwhile, in January and February, of 
the company of settlers half had died. 

* ^ In ye depth of winter, and wanting houses 
and other comforts, being infected with ye 
scurvie and other diseases, which their long 
voyage and their inacomodate condition 
had brought upon them," they died, 

* * sometimes 2 or Sofa day. ' ' On the 5th 
of February, Eose Standish died. '' Scarce 
fifty remained," says Bradford, ** and of 
these in ye time of most distress ther was 
but 6. or 7. sound persons, who, to their 
great comendations be it spoken, spared no 
pains, night nor day, but with abundance 
of toyle and hazard of their own health, 
fetched the wood, made them fires, dressed 
them meat, made their beds, washed their 
lothsome cloths — and all this willingly and 
cheerfully, without any grudging in the 
least, shewing herein their true^ love unto 
their friends and brethren." ** Two of 



118 THE ADVENTURES OF 

these 7. were Mr. William Brewster, their 
reverend Elder, and Myles Standish, ther 
Captain and Military Commander.'' 

In this forlorn condition was the settle- 
ment, many dead and most of the others 
sick, the sea before them, and the menacing 
forest behind, when, on the Friday morning 
of a ^* fair, warm day '' in March, there 
came in boldly "" all alone and along the 
houses,'' a naked savage, crying, '' Wel- 
come ! ' ' Samoset was himself but a visitor 
in these parts, being from Maine, where 
he had learned some English from the fish- 
ermen; he was able, however, to give much 
information. He explained the hostility 
shown to Standish in the First Encounter 
by the fact that Captain Hunt, an English 
shipmaster, had stolen twenty-seven men 
from those shores and carried them to 
Spain to sell as slaves. He said that one of 
these captives, named Squanto, had got 
to England, where he had lived in London 
for some years with a merchant in Corn- 
hill, and had himself made his way home. 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 119 

And he told the story of the Great Plague. 
Standi sh learned that they who had been 
feared as enemies, against whom he had 
established on the hill his Minion and his 
Saker, and his Bases — stout cannon all — 
were themselves vanquished, broken, and 
almost exterminated by pestilence. Pres- 
ently Samoset brought Squanto, and Samo- 
set and Squanto procured a conference be- 
tween the pilgrims and Massasoit, their 
nearest neighbor. 

Massasoit had prudently prepared him- 
self for this interview by getting ** all the 
Powachs of ye cuntrie, for 3. days to- 
gether, in a horid and divellish maner to 
curse and execrate them with their cun- 
jurations, which assambly and service they 
held in a dark and dismall swampe.'' He 
now came forward, Captain Standish and 
Master Allerton meeting him at the brook 
with half-a-dozen musketeers. He was con- 
ducted to a barn then in building, where 
were placed a green rug and three or 
four cushions. The Indian king and the 



120 THE ADVENTURES OF 

Puritan governor kissed each other's 
hands. Then *' the governor called for 
some strong water and drunk to him, and 
he drunk a great draught, that made him 
sweat all the time after. ' ' So they made a 
treaty of peace, assuring Massasoit that so 
long as he kept it ' ' King James would es- 
teem of him as his friend and ally. ' ' The 
next day Standish and Allerton ** ventur- 
ously " returned the Indians' visit, and 
were regaled with groundnuts and tobacco. 
In spite of this polite beginning,. the Pil- 
grims never got on well with the Indians. 
The contrast, in this particular, between 
the two colonies founded by religious per- 
sons and for religious purposes, — Plym- 
outh and Pennsylvania, — is very marked. 
William Penn lands upon the site of Phila- 
delphia and finds a company of Indians. 
They receive him cheerfully, give him food, 
and entertain him with games, skipping 
and jumping. Penn skips and jumps with 
them, and they are all fraternally merry 
together. Myles Standish lands on Cape 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 121 

Cod, forms his men in single file, all in 
armor and carrying guns, and presently 
the Indians raise a great cry and come 
upon them with arrows. Penn had no gun. 
The only man harmed by the Indians of 
Pennsylvania during a long course of years 
was one who owned a gun. The Pilgrims 
came out with a full equipment, not only 
of muskets, but of cannon. This was prob- 
ably due to Standish's counsel; he looked 
after the munitions of war. It is pos- 
sible that if Standish had not been of 
the company, and the settlers had come 
as peaceable and friendly folk, they might 
have established the same relations with 
their savage neighbors as prevailed in 
Pennsylvania. 

On the other hand, it appears that a hos- 
tile feeling had preceded the settlement 
of Plymouth. The Indians of those parts 
had chiefly learned to esteem white men as 
enemies. They had a tradition that the 
great plague came from a Frenchman's 
curse. They remembered Hunt, the kid- 



122 THE ADVENTURES OF 

napper. It is likely that had it not been 
for Captain Standish, the Pilgrims, land- 
ing under such conditions, among Indians 
of a more savage temper than those of 
Pennsylvania, and justly enraged, would 
have been summarily cut off. As it was, 
they had several narrow escapes. So that 
it may fairly be said that Standish saved 
the colony. Without him, it might have 
met the fate of other, worse defended 
settlements. 

The Plymouth people had now three val- 
uable Indian friends: Massasoit, the 
sachem; Squanto, the interpreter; and 
Hobamack, one of Massasoit ^s warriors, a 
man of might. They cast in their lot with 
the white men. They were very jealous 
the one of another; and Squanto, by a 
childish trick, which was meant to show 
that he was the best friend of the white 
man, came near to getting the settlers into 
serious trouble with Massasoit. But they 
were faithful friends, both of them, and 
even their jealousy was turned to account 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 123 

by taking Squanto into Governor Brad- 
ford's house, and Hobamack into Captain 
Standish's, at which convenient distance 
they competed which should do the colony 
most good. Squanto taught the settlers 
how to fish and plant, and served as guide 
and adviser. He materially assisted Stan- 
dish's defensive measures by informing 
the Indians that the English had the plague 
buried in a pot under the ground, whence 
they were likely to bring it out on the least 
provocation. 

In August, 1621, Corbitant, one of the 
neighbors of Massasoit, having refused to 
sign the treaty of peace, seized Squanto, 
saying that now the English had lost their 
tongue. Standish felt that hesitation, or 
even forbearance, would now be fatal. 
Straight he marched with fourteen men 
into Corbitant 's town, beset the chief's 
house, and without serious bloodshed 
brought back the interpreter in safety. 

In September, with nine men of Plym- 
outh, and Squanto for pilot, Standish 



lU THE ADVENTURES OF 

sailed up into Boston Bay. They spent a 
night in the open boat in the lee of Thomp- 
son's Island, and in the morning landed on 
the peninsula, whose name of Squantum 
preserves the memory of their friend. The 
event is commemorated by a monument 
bearing the inscription. 

Captain Myles Standish 

with his men, guided by the 

Indian Squanto, landed here 

September 30, 1621. 

Here they found a pile of lobsters, freshly 
caught, on which they made their breakfast, 
paying for them, according to their honest 
custom, when they met the owners. Pres- 
ently they found the '* governor,'' named 
Obbatinewat, who lived, as they expressed 
it, ** in the bottom of the Massachusetts 
Bay. ' ' Obbatinewat, who was much afraid 
of his visitors, told them how he lived in 
terror, not only of the Tarratines, a sav- 
age people dwelling to the north, but of 
the squaw sachem, a lady of the immediate 
neighborhood, who was continually attack- 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 125 

ing him. The Pilgrims looked about the 
country, crossing over to what is now 
Charlestown, and marching inland to what 
is now Medford and Winchester. Every 
camp was abandoned upon their approach. 
All the warriors hid themselves in the 
woods. The great plague had not only 
broken their strength, but had destroyed 
their nerve : they had no spirit left. The 
visitors found many squaws, but missed the 
Massachusetts Queen. They came away 
with two impressions of Boston: first, 
that it was inhabited mainly by women; 
and, secondly, that it was the most beauti- 
ful place they had found in all their 
travels. So they returned to Plymouth, 
with a fair wind and a light moon. 

In December, the Narragansetts, of 
Ehode Island, the most formidable of their 
neighbors, sent a messenger with a bundle 
of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin. 
Standish detained the messenger until they 
should learn what these symbols meant. 
When it was found that they threatened 



126 THE ADVENTURES OF 

war, the men of Plymouth stuffed the skin 
with powder and shot, and returned polite 
regrets to the Narragansetts that the Eng- 
lish had no suitable boats in which to make 
them a visit, adding that if the Narragan- 
setts cared to come and make the first call 
themselves they might be sure of a warm 
reception. The Narragansetts sent back 
the powder and shot, and did not come. 
But the Pilgrims, knowing how much 
stouter their defiance was than their de- 
fence, set a strong line of palings about the 
settlement, with gates to lock at night; 
and Captain Standish divided the men into 
four companies, and summoned a ** general 
muster." 

The most serious peril came, however, 
from another direction. In the summer of 
1622, Master Weston, a money-making cit- 
izen of London, who had been concerned in 
the sailing of the Mayflower, established a 
colony at Wessagusset, near the present 
Weymouth. It was a trading venture, and 
the colonists were most of them ** rude 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 127 

fellows,'^ as Weston liimself called them; 
** stout knaves," was the name which 
Master Morton called them, being an 
associate with them. 

Food was very scarce both at Wessagns- 
set and at Plymouth ; and this scarcity the 
new colonists increased by foolishly paying 
the Indians as much for a quart of corn as 
the Plymouth people were wont to pay for 
a skin of beaver. The two settlements 
sent out a joint expedition that autumn in 
search of food; Standish being in com- 
mand, and Squanto acting as interpreter. 
The weather was very bad, and the boat 
was several times forced back into port. 
Standish fell sick of a fever, and gave up 
the command to Bradford. Presently, at 
Chatham, on the back side of Cape Cod, 
Squanto was suddenly taken sick and died. 
At last, having secured some corn, Brad- 
ford and his party left the Wessagusset 
people to bring the food to port, and walked 
home fifty miles, preferring that to the 
company of their neighbors. Even thus, 



128 THE ADVENTURES OF 

the supply was not sufficient, and there was 
hunger in both colonies. 

Under these hard circumstances, the men 
of the new colony so conducted themselves 
as to cause the Indians to lose both fear 
and respect of them. In their straits, they 
sold the Indians their clothes and bed-cov- 
erings. ** Others (so base were they) be- 
came servants to the Indeans ; and would 
cutt their woode & fetch them water for a 
cap full of come ; others fell to plaine steal- 
ing, both night and day, from ye Indeans, 
of which they greevously complained." 
Thus the Indians began not only to hate 
but to despise them. They daily insulted 
the planters. '* Yea, in ye end,'' says 
Bradford, ** they were faine to hang one 
of their men, whom they could not reclaime 
from stealing, to give ye Indeans con- 
tente. ' ' Master Morton, in his * * New Eng- 
lish Canaan," says that they put the stout 
thief's clothes upon another of their com- 
pany who was sick and not likely to live, 
and hanged the sick man in the well man's 



CAPTAIN IMYLES STANDISH 129 

place. It is the story which Butler tells in 
^^Hudibras": 

*' Our Brethren of New England use 
Choice Malefactors to excuse, 
And hang the Guiltless in their stead, 
Of whom the Churches have less need; 
As lately happened : In a town 
There lived a Cobbler, and but one 
That out of Doctrine could cut Use, 
And mend men's lives as well as shoes. 
This precious Brother having slain, 
In times of peace, an Indian, 
(Not out of malice, but mere zeal, 
Because he was an Infidel,) 
The mighty Tottipottymoy 
Sent to our Elders an envoy, 
Complaining sorely of the breach 
Of league held forth by Brother Patch, 
Against the articles in force 
Between both churches, his and ours, 
For which he craved the Saints to render 
Into his hands, or hang th' Offender; 
But they maturely having weighed 
They had no more than him o' th' trade, 
(A man that served them in a double 
Capacity, to teach and cobble,) 
Resolv'd to spare him ; yet to do 
The Indian Hoghan Moghan too 
Impartial justice, in his stead did 
Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid." 

The right man was hanged, but even this 
did not give ' ^ ye Indeans contente. ' ' They 



130 THE ADVENTURES OF 

made a plot to exterminate the white men. 
Few in numbers themselves, they sent mes- 
sengers to the Narragansetts, to the Cape 
Cod tribes, and, in short, to all their neigh- 
bors in the forest, and arranged for a gen- 
eral massacre. Winslow went to see Mas- 
sasoit, who was sick, and either by applica- 
tion of simple remedies or by turning out 
the native doctors with their tom-toms, re- 
covered him to health; and Massasoit 
disclosed the plot. 

Standish, at the same time, went on an- 
other expedition to Cape Cod for corn, and 
met with a cold reception from Indians 
who had before been friendly. He found 
Wituwamat there, a Massachusetts Indian, 
who flourished a knife, and made a wild 
speech, insulting the captain. That night 
one of the savages insisted on sleeping in 
Standish 's lodging, making great protesta- 
tions of friendship. The night was bit- 
terly cold, and partly by reason of the 
weather, partly from anxiety and sus- 
picion, the captain took no rest, ** but 



CAPTAIN IVIYLES STANDISH 131 

either walked, or turned himself to and fro 
at the fire.'' The Indian asked him why 
he did not sleep, and he answered that * ^ he 
knew not well, but he had no desire at all 
to rest/' So the perilous night passed. 

No sooner had Winslow and Standish 
returned with these ill tidings, than Phin- 
ehas Pratt suddenly appeared from Wes- 
sagusset, covered with snow, fainting with 
fear, hunger, and weariness, and pursued 
by Indians. He brought information that 
the plot was on the eve of execution. 

Standish took eight men with him and 
proceeded straight to the heart of the peril. 
Nobody in the colony knew the Indians as 
he did. Winslow says that he could un- 
derstand their language better than any of 
the others. He knew that, under the cir- 
cumstances, conciliation would be impos- 
sible. It was a hard case. The Indians 
had a good deal of right on their side. A 
company of vagabonds gathered from the 
corners of London streets made most un- 
pleasant neighbors, whom even the Pil- 



IS^ THE ADVENTURES OP 

grims could not endure. It was natural 
enough that the Indians should resolve to 
get rid of them, and natural enough, also, 
that they should fail to make a fine dis- 
crimination and should include all the peo- 
ple of pale face under the ban. On the 
other hand, the lives of the Plymouth set- 
tlers were at stake, and the great cause for 
which they stood was in peril. Standish 
saw clearly that there was but one way out. 
And he took that way. 

Being arrived at the stockade at Wes- 
sagusset, the captain found the colonists 
weak and frightened, and the Indians bold 
and insulting. Wituwamat showed a sharp 
knife having a woman's face pictured on 
the handle. ** I have another at home," 
he said, ** wherewith I have killed both 
French and English, and that hath a man's 
face on it; and by-and-by these two must 
marry." Pecksuot, also, a man of great 
size, taunted Standish on his short stature. 
The next day, being the 6th of April, 
1623, they came again, these braves and 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 133 

a few others, the leaders and inspirers of 
the plot. They were allowed to enter the 
blockhouse. Suddenly Standish gave a 
signal, and upon the instant leaped on 
Pecksuot, seized the knife which hung at 
his neck, and stabbed him with it. Each of 
his four or ^ve companions attacked an- 
other savage. The door was fastened, and 
for a few tragic moments, without groan 
or cry, the struggle went on. When the 
door was opened, the men who were the 
heart and hands of the conspiracy were all 
dead. On the day after there was a brief 
skirmish in which Hobamack put the 
remaining warriors to flight. 

When Pastor Eobinson, in Leyden, heard 
of this encounter he was much grieved 
thereat, and besought the church to con- 
sider the disposition of their captain, who 
was of a warm temper, adding also, in 
words applicable to other campaigns of 
nearer date, ** how happy a thing had 
it been that you had converted some be- 
fore you killed any." There is no doubt, 



134 THE ADVENTURES OF 

however, but that Standish, by thus taking 
the lives of a few, saved the lives of many, 
both Englishmen and Indians. It was the 
only blood which the captain shed. There- 
after, his name alone was as terrible as an 
army with banners. 

One of the original settlers at Wessa- 
gusset was Thomas Morton. Morton was 
a London lawyer, an ardent sportsman and 
lover of nature. Massachusetts delighted 
him. Its ^* many goodly groves of trees, 
dainty, fine, round, rising hillocks, delicate, 
fair, large plains, sweet, crystal fountains, 
and clear running streams,'' with fruit 
and flowers and ^^ lilies of the Daphnean 
tree," made the land seem to him like 
Paradise. He returned to England before 
winter came to change his mind, and be- 
fore the Wessagusset people entered into 
their misfortunes. Presently Captain 
Wollaston fitting out an expedition, Mor- 
ton came back with it; and after some 
months, Wollaston and most of his party 
having moved to Virginia, Morton put him- 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 135 

self at the head of the half-dozen who 
remained. 

The settlers established themselves at 
Passonagessit, within the limits of the 
present city of Quincy. There they bnilt 
their house on the summit of one of those 
gentle hills which Morton liked so much, 
looking out over Boston Bay. They had 
two purposes: one was to trade with the 
Indians for skins; the other was to have 
as good a time as was possible under the 
circumstances. Their pursuit of these 
purposes made them excessively obnoxious 
to all their prudent and serious English 
neighbors. Morton, indeed, with his 
boisterous ideas of pleasure and his frank 
dislike of Puritans, represented everything 
that was objectionable in politics, in 
religion, and in manners. Bradford says 
that he * ^ became lord of misrule and main- 
tained (as it were) a school of Atheisme." 
Mr. Fiske, in his ** Beginnings of New 
England,'' suggests that the accusation of 
atheism was '^ based upon the fact that he 



136 THE ADVENTURES OF 

used the Book of Common Prayer." That 
Morton used the Prayer Book he, himself, 
asserts. '^ Mine host," he says, meaning 
himself, ** was a man that indeavoured to 
advance the dignity of the Church of Eng- 
land, which they (on the contrary part) 
would labour to vilifie with uncivile terms ; 
enveying against the sacred book of com- 
mon prayer and mine host that used it in 
a laudable manner amongst his family, as 
a practice of piety." Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams, in his * ^ Three Episodes of Massa- 
chusetts History," thinks it likely that 
Morton somewhat exaggerated his cham- 
pionship in order to get the favor of Laud 
in the troubles which he presently had with 
the Puritans. The combination of fervent 
piety with Morton's marked devotion to 
*' barrells of beere " and ** lassies in 
beaver coats " is, to say the least, improb- 
able. And the spectacle of Master Morton 
reading the Morning Prayer with his com- 
panions at Merrymount passes imagina- 
tion. There is, at least, no doubt but that 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 137 

in his trading with the Indians, he sold 
them guns and ammunition. That, of it- 
self, made him a mischievous citizen. 
Every colonist's life was endangered. 

On the May-day of 1627 the men of Mer- 
rymount set up a May-pole. We * * brewed 
a harrell of excellente beere," says the 
chief offender, telling his own story, * * and 
provided for a case of bottles, to be spent, 
with other good cheare, for all comers of 
that day. ' ' And he * ^ brought the Maypole 
to the place appointed with drummes, 
gunnes, pistols and other fitting instru- 
ments for that purpose ; and there erected 
it with the help of savages, that came 
thether of purpose to see the manner of 
our Revels. ' ' So they danced about it, the 
white men and the braves and the lassies in 
beaver coats, and were as merry as the day 
was long. 

This, the ** precise separatists that lived 
at New Plymouth " found a ** lamentable 
Spectacle.'' Twice they wrote to Morton, 
but he answered with high words. The 



138 THE ADVENTURES OF 

situation became so serious that all the 
settlers up and down the neighboring 
coasts were concerned. If the Merry- 
mount proceedings continued, the resi- 
dence of decent people in those parts would 
become impossible. Finally, Myles Stan- 
dish was sent out to arrest the offending 
household. He took eight men with him, — 
a number which he seems to have pre- 
ferred in the face of danger or difficulty, — 
and laid hold on Morton as he was on a 
visit to Wessagusset. But in the night 
Morton got away. They had him sleep- 
ing between guards, but the guards slept 
sounder than he did. Suddenly a door 
slammed and they awoke to find him gone. 
** The word," he says, ** which was given 
with an alarme, was, ' 0, he's gon — ^he's 
gon! What shell wee doe, he's gon!' — the 
rest (halfe a sleepe) start up in a maze, 
and, like rames, ran their heads one at an- 
other full batt in the darke. Their guard 
leader, Captaine Shrimpe, tooke on most 
furiously, and tore his clothes for anger to 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 139 

see the empty nest and their bird gone. 
The rest were eager to have torne theire 
haire from theire heads; but it was 
so short, that it would give them no 
hold.'' 

Standish and his men started in pursuit, 
and found Morton and two companions en- 
trenched at Merrymount, well armed with 
guns, but too drunk to use them. Thus 
they were captured, and brought down to 
Plymouth, whence Morton was presently 
shipped to England, where he wrote his 
'' New English Canaan,'' and, in various 
ways, at the court of Charles I, did what 
he could to make trouble for the colony. 

Meanwhile the captain had comforted 
himself in his hardships and responsibili- 
ties by a second marriage. 

The earliest account which I can find of 
the romantic tradition which is associated 
with Standish 's memory is in the Rev. 
Timothy Alden's '' Collection of American 
Epitaphs." Mr. Alden says that he had the 
story from those to whom it had been care- 



14,0 THE ADVENTURES OF 

fully handed down. * ^ In a very short time 
after the decease of Mrs. Standish, the 
captain was led to think that if he could 
obtain Miss Priscilla Mullins, a daughter 
of Mr. William Mullins, the breach in his 
family would be happily repaired. He, 
therefore, according to the custom of those 
times, sent to ask Mr. Mullins 's permission 
to visit his daughter. John Alden, the 
messenger, went and faithfully communi- 
cated the wishes of the captain. The old 
gentleman did not object, as he might have 
done, on account of the recency of Captain 
Standish 's bereavement. He said it was 
perfectly agreeable to him, but the young 
lady must also be consulted. The damsel 
was then called into the room, and John 
Alden, who is said to have been a man of 
most excellent form, with a fair and ruddy 
complexion, arose, and, in a very courteous 
and prepossessing manner, delivered his 
errand. Miss Mullins listened with re- 
spectful attention, and, at last, after a con- 
siderable pause, fixing her eyes upon him, 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 141 

said, 'Prithee, John, why do you not speak 
for yourself r " 

The captain's second wife was Barbara, 
whose other name is unknown, a passenger 
by the Ann, Presently he settled on his 
land at Duxbury, having the Captain's 
Hill in the middle of his farm, now crowned 
by his tall monument. Here he built him 
a house, wherein he lived to the end of his 
days. Here he gathered his children about 
him : his six boys, Alexander, Charles, John, 
Myles, Josiah, and a second Charles, and 
his daughter, Lora. The little daughter's 
sampler is in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, 

*' Lora Standish is my name. 

Lord, guide my heart that I may do thy will; 
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill 

As will conduce to virtue void of shame, 
And I will give the glory to thy name." 

Alexander Standish married Sarah Alden, 
daughter of John and Priscilla. 

The captain continued all his life in the 
military command of the colony. Once he 
went to fight the French, who had inter- 
fered with the Plymouth trade on the Pen- 



142 THE ADVENTURES OF 

obscot river, but it was a fruitless expedi- 
tion. Again he prepared to fight the 
Dutch, when there was war between Eng- 
land and Holland in 1652, but peace was 
declared before colonial hostilities began. 
The Narragansetts raised a force to attack 
the settlements, and the captain led the 
Plymouth company which marched with 
the men of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and New Haven to meet them, but the 
Indians did not fight. 

Standish took part also in the civil af- 
fairs of the colony. For twenty years he 
was one of the governor's assistants. Once 
he went, as agent of the plantation, to Eng- 
land, where he began the negotiations by 
which, later, he and seven others bought 
out all the interests of the Merchant Ad- 
venturers in the Plymouth Colony for 
£1,800. The year, however, was a bad one. 
Even within sight of England, the com- 
panion to Standish 's ship was captured by 
the Turks, and passengers and crew sold 
into slavery. Affairs of state were in 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH US 

disorder, and the plague was in possession 
of London. It was no time to do business, 
and Standish returned, having borrowed 
£150 at 50 per cent, interest. 

Lowell, in his '' Interview with Miles 
Standish, '* sits before the fire at twilight, 
looking reflectively upon a chair beside 
him, which had been conveyed to these 
shores in the good ship Mayfioiver. 

*' It came out in that famous bark 
That brought our sires intrepid, 
Capacious as another ark 
For furniture decrepit." 

And as the logs burn low, and the poet's 
thoughts go back into those old days which 
he had been considering, behold the chair 
is occupied ; he sees 

*'. . . its trembling arms enclose 
A figure grim and rusty, 
Whose doublet plain and plainer hose 
Were somewhat worn and dusty." 

And, as he wonders who his guest may be, 

*' Just then the ghost drew up his chair 
And said, ' My name is Standish.' " 



144 THE ADVENTURES OF 

Whereupon ensues a sturdy conversation, 
in which the captain speaks his mind on 
the subject of compromise with slavery. 

Thus he sat in his declining days, look- 
ing out over the green country which his 
strong arm had helped to win, reading his 
Homer's ** Iliad " with an appreciation 
which, in these gentler days, we miss, con- 
sulting now his *' Country Farmer,'' and 
now his *^ Phisition's Practice," accord- 
ing to the emergency, bucolic or domestic; 
studying his ** History of the World," in 
whose continuing chapters he himself 
should have a place; and on Sundays re- 
freshing his soul with Borroughs' **Gos- 
pell Conversation," and the martial psalms 
of David. 

There is a touch of tenderness in the 
words of the old man's will, which seems, 
for a moment, to be foreign to the grim 
spirit of him who stabbed Pecksuot, and 
nailed the head of Wituwamat to the wall 
of the meeting-house. But the captain had 
a warm heart ever. He loved his friends 



CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 145 

with an enduring and solicitous affection. 
We may not forget his faithful nursing in 
the first tragic winter. He desires that 
his body may be laid as near as conveni- 
ently may be to his two dear daughters, 
Lora his daughter, and Mary, his daughter- 
in-law. He commends his dear and lov- 
ing wife, Barbara Standish, to the Chris- 
tian counsel and advice of his dear friends, 
Mr. Timothy Hatherly and Captain James 
Cudworth. '' Further, my will is that 
Marcye Eobenson, whom I tenderly love 
for her grandfather's sake, shall have three 
pounds." 

So he died, on the 3d day of October, 
1656, with the regard of all who knew him, 
having rendered inestimable service to the 
cause of religion, of freedom, and of 
humanity. 



THE EDUCATION OF JOHN 
HARVARD 



IV 

THE EDUCATION OF JOHN 
HARVARD 

A LL that was known of John Harvard 
l\ before the 22d of February, 1884, may 
be stated in two minutes. It was based 
on a will, a signature, a record, and a book. 

A will had been found in London drawn 
by a Eobert Harvard, one of whose sons 
was named John. It was possible that this 
John was the benefactor of New England, 
but there was no proof. If he was, then 
his father belonged to the parish of St. 
Saviour's, Southwark, and was by trade 
a butcher. 

A signature had been found in Cam- 
bridge, England, plainly that of our John 
when he took his degree. This showed that 
he studied at Emmanuel College, and was 
made B.A. in 1631 and M.A. in 1635. 

A record remaining in the annals of the 

149 



150 THE EDUCATION OF 

First Church of Charlestown, Massachu- 
setts, showed that John Harvard came to 
this country in 1637, was admitted a min- 
ister of God's Word in that place, died in 
1638, and left to the neighboring college, 
newly founded, his library and half of his 
estate. A curious particularity in the 
midst of the general ignorance recorded 
that this contribution was £779 17s. 2d. 
The twopence were especially provoking. 

Beside the will, the signature, and these 
local facts, was one book remaining from 
the library. All the others were burned at 
the destruction of Harvard Hall in 1764. 
This volume was a stout folio entitled 
'* The Christian Warfare." A borrower 
had it on the day when the library was 
destroyed. 

In 1882 persons interested in genealogy 
raised money to have English records 
searched for facts about New England 
families. The results were to be published 
in the ** New England Historical and 
Genealogical Eegister.'' Mr. H. F. Waters, 



JOHN HARVARD 151 

a graduate of Harvard interested in such 
matters, was intrusted with this commis- 
sion, and went to England and set about 
reading seventeenth century wills. In the 
midst of this business, having already con- 
sulted several thousands of these docu- 
ments, suddenly, on Washington's Birth- 
day, 1884, he rose up from Ms reading and 
said to his fellow antiquaries: *^ I have 
put my ^geY on John Harvard!'' 

Mr. Waters had found the will of 
Thomas Harvard, of Southwark, cloth- 
worker. His estate was to be divided be- 
tween his widow and his living brother, 
John Harvard. He gave directions con- 
cerning his funeral at St. Saviour's, South- 
wark, and left forty shillings to Mr. Nich- 
olas Morton, the minister, in recompense 
of the funeral sermon. One of the execu- 
tors was Mr. Morton, the other was John 
Harvard. A note attesting the proving of 
the will by Mr. Morton, May 5, 1637, pro- 
vided for a commission to be issued to John 
Harvard when he should come to seek it. 



152 THE EDUCATION OF 

Here, accordingly, was a John Harvard 
absent from England in 1637, at the exact 
time when our John Harvard was on the 
sea coming in this direction. 

This clue led the way to such discoveries 
that there is now no New Englander 
of that generation concerning whose 
relatives we know so much. 

Another dramatic moment in these 
genealogical adventures came at Strat- 
ford-on-Avon. Mr. Waters found that 
John Harvard's mother was Katherine 
Eogers, of Stratford. He went to the par- 
ish church there and spent a day, as he 
says, from matins to evensong, examining 
the records, learning about the Eogers 's. 
As he walked about the town in the long 
English twilight, he looked with interest 
at the timbered front of a fine Elizabethan 
house, under whose second story window 
stood the inscription T. E. 1596 A. E. At 
once there came to his mind the names of 
Thomas Eogers and Alice, his wife. No- 
body in Stratford knew what the initials 



JOHN HARVARD 153 

meant, but the records of the property veri- 
fied his conjecture. It was the house of 
John Harvard ^s grandfather, his mother's 
father. 

These two incidents, the clause in the 
will and the inscription on the house, were 
but more dramatic events in a process of 
patient research whereby the facts con- 
cerning John Harvard became known. 
These facts are centred mainly about 
three places, Southwark, Cambridge, and 
Charlestown. 

John Harvard was born in the London 
borough of Southwark, at the south end of 
London Bridge, in 1607, the Jamestown 
year. The date is determined by an entry 
in the parish register of St. Saviour's 
Church, showing that he was baptised in 
that year, on the 29th of November. The 
site of the house is located by the token 
books of St. Saviour's Church. According 
to ancient custom a token in the shape of 
a lead or pewter ticket was given to every 
communicant once a year, and was by him 



154 THE EDUCATION OF 

returned to the vicar on the occasion of 
his attendance at the service. A record of 
these tickets was kept in the token book, 
wherein were entered the name and address 
of every communicant. The book shows 
that the Harvards lived in High Street, 
opposite the Boar's Head Inn. 

The father of John Harvard, like the 
father of Cardinal Wolsej, was a butcher. 
It was a good business in Southwark, ex- 
ceeded only, if at all, by that of inn-hold- 
ing; the place was filled with inns and 
butcher shops. For London Bridge was 
the great gate of London. There began 
the road to Winchester and to Canterbury, 
and to the great world in general. There 
was continual coming and going ; hence the 
demand for inns, and the demand for 
butchers to supply them. 

John Harvard's mother, Katherine 
Eogers, knew the Shakespeares, at Strat- 
ford. Her father and Shakespeare's 
father were aldermen together and near 
neighbors. From 1596 to 1611, that is, till 



JOHN HARVARD 155 

John Harvard was four years of age, Will- 
iam Shakespeare had his residence in 
Southwark, where his Globe Theatre stood 
not far from the Harvard house. It is a 
fair guess that he visited his old friends, 
and that on the occasion of these visits he 
held John Harvard on his knee. As for 
Katherine, she was three times married: 
to Robert Harvard, the butcher ; after his 
death to John Elletson, the cooper; after 
his death to Eichard Yearwood, a grocer, 
having a seat in the Puritan Parliament. 
She was evidently a pleasant person. The 
money which founded Harvard College 
came from the earnings of these honest 
tradesmen. 

There were brothers and sisters. Mary 
and Robert were older than John ; Thomas, 
Katherine, and Peter were younger. 

The town of Southwark of that day was 
a busy and interesting place. Standing at 
the door of the Harvard house and look- 
ing to the left one saw the Thames, crossed 
by London Bridge, whose formidable gate 



156 THE EDUCATION OF 

served for the purpose of defence and for 
the display of heads of offenders. In a 
picture made in 1616, when John Harvard 
was of the age of nine, eighteen such heads 
on pikes are displayed above the gate. 

Looking to the right, one saw the street, 
gradually widening, ascend St. Margaret's 
hill. In the middle, almost in front of the 
Harvard house, were the pillory and the 
cage, and beyond these the bull ring, for 
baiting bulls. The bear garden for bait- 
ing bears was on the river bank, next to 
the Globe Theatre. The process of bait- 
ing was to fasten the bull or the bear be- 
hind and let the dogs loose upon him. The 
Puritans were said to object to this en- 
tertainment, not on account of the pain 
which it gave to the bear, but on ac- 
count of the pleasure which it gave to the 
spectators. In this they were quite right. 

Directly across the road from the Har- 
vard door was the Boar's Head Inn, and 
to the right, in almost continuous row, 
were nine other taverns; including the 



JOHN HARVARD 157 

Tabard, memorable as the meeting place 
of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the White 
Hart, where Mr. Pickwick made the ac- 
quaintance of Sam Weller ; and the Queen's 
Head, which John Harvard's mother left 
him in her will. Behind the Boar's Head, 
in large grounds, stood St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital. On one side of the Harvard house 
was the Bull's Head Inn, on the other side 
was the east chain gate of the churchyard 
of St. Saviour's Church. Near the church 
in the same enclosure was the Grammar 
School, which the church maintained. 

John Harvard began his schooling, ac- 
cording to custom, at the age of seven, and 
continued this form of education for a 
dozen years till he was prepared for col- 
lege. Shakespeare gives a picture of the 
schoolboy of John Harvard's time: 

"The whining schoolboy with his satchel 
And shining- morning face, creeping like a Snail 
Unwillingly to school." 

The day began in winter at seven, in sum- 
mer at six, and continued, with two hours 



158 THE EDUCATION OF 

intermission for dinner, until five or six. 
Thus the rules required a boy to bring, not 
only a Bible and other books, pens, paper 
and ink in his satchel, but candles for the 
early and late hours of the dark days of 
winter. There was a vacation of one week 
at the time of the Southwark Fair. One 
reason why the whining schoolboy went un- 
willingly to school is seen by the advice 
given by the authorities to parents ** to 
manage with great discretion and severity 
at home, which will make him love his 
school.'' Every quarter every boy paid 
twopence for brooms and rods; these 
brooms were not intended for domestic use, 
but were applied to the dusting of the 
boys' backs. The boy of seven must al- 
ready know the rudiments of Latin gram- 
mar, and be able to read Tully, his Second 
Epistle, and Corderius, his ^' Dialogues." 
Thence he proceeded along the ways of 
Latin and Greek and Hebrew. 

St. Saviour's Church, whose bells 
sounded in John Harvard's ears from his 



JOHN HARVARD 159 

earliest infancy, had been the chapel of a 
priory of Augustinian monks, and was then 
named St. Mary Overy, which is inter- 
preted to mean St. Mary of the Ferry, for 
the church antedated London Bridge. But 
Henry the Eighth had suppressed the pri- 
ory, and, putting the two parishes together, 
had named the church St. Saviour's. It is 
still a noble sanctuary, with long aisles and 
clustering chapels and ancient monuments, 
and serves to-day as the Cathedral of 
Southwark. 

A canon of 1603 designated sixteen as the 
age of first communion. It is, therefore, 
to be inferred that John Harvard was con- 
firmed about the year 1623. The vicar at 
that time was Dr. Sutton, who is remem- 
bered by two incidents. He hated the 
theatre and attacked it in his sermons. 
Southwark, at that time, was the theatrical 
centre of London. The Globe and the 
Rose were both within the parish of St. 
Saviour's. One of Dr. Sutton's sermons 
was answered with some indignation by an 



160 THE EDUCATION OF 

actor. Jolin Harvard's father was a church 
warden, and the boy probably heard both 
the sermon and the discussion which fol- 
lowed. Dr. Sutton was also an enemy of 
Eoman Catholics. In October, 1623, after 
the vicar 's death by drowning, a large con- 
gregation of Eoman Catholics, meeting in 
an upper room in London, heard a sermon 
preached by Father Drury, a Jesuit, 
against Luther, Calvin, and Dr. Sutton. 
The sea, he said, had swallowed the vicar 
because he was unworthy to be buried in 
the earth. At that moment the floor gave 
way and the preacher and the con- 
gregation were precipitated into the cellar. 

The bishop to whom Dr. Sutton prob- 
ably presented John Harvard for confirma- 
tion was that most devout, learned, and 
large-minded prelate, Launcelot Andrewes, 
in whose charge was the diocese of Win- 
chester. 

Thus John Harvard spent his boyhood 
in a good home, in an interesting town, and 
under the profitable instruction of church 



JOHN HARVARD 161 

and school. The high street was of itself an 
education. It was a place of continual pro- 
cession, merchants and dignitaries from 
foreign lands passing daily on the way to 
London. And along with this went the nor- 
mal life of childhood. The picture which 
shows the heads on the pikes shows also 
a boy rolling a hoop, and another boy 
catching on behind a cart. 

But in 1625 the plague came. The sani- 
tary conditions were indescribable, and of- 
fered an imperative invitation to the pesti- 
lence. The street around the corner was 
named Foul Lane, and, no doubt, deserved 
that title. Within a space of five weeks ^ve 
members of the Harvard household died: 
first Mary, then Eobert, four days later; 
then little Katherine and little Peter; 
finally the father. There remained the 
mother and her two sons, John and 
Thomas. 

It may have been this tragedy which 
turned young Harvard's thoughts towards 
the ministry. Or it may have been the in- 



162 THE EDUCATION OF 

fluence of the Rev. Nicholas Morton, of St. 
Saviour's, whom we have seen already as a 
close friend of the family. It was prob- 
ably the influence of Morton which sent him 
to Cambridge and to Emmanuel College, of 
which Morton was himself a graduate. It 
is interesting to remember in this connec- 
tion that Morton's son, Charles, came 
afterwards to this country. He had done 
some tutoring in the midst of his ministry, 
and one of his pupils had been De Foe, the 
author of '^ Robinson Crusoe." Charles 
became vice-president of Harvard College, 
being, perhaps, the only person who ever 
occupied that unusual academic position. 
They would have appointed him president 
but for the fact that he had made himself 
obnoxious to James II, and such honor 
seemed politically unwise. He became min- 
ister of the First Church in Charlestown. 
So John Harvard went to Cambridge, the 
Puritan University. The Reformation had 
divided Christianity in Europe into two 
distinct companies, — Catholic and Protes- 



JOHN HARVARD 163 

tant. The Catholics upheld the value of 
the institution, the Protestants the impor- 
tance of the individual. In England the 
two companies dwelt together in one 
church. Two sects had, indeed, appeared 
at the extremes ; on the one side, the Sep- 
aratists ; on the other side, the Eomanists, 
had separated from the Church. But the 
men of the Old Learning and the New 
Learning, as they were called at that time, 
the High Church and the Low Church, as 
they are called to-day, were still united. 
The time was indeed approaching when 
Charles and Laud in their endeavor to en- 
force uniformity should disrupt the church. 
But to the end of John Harvard's life there 
was no definite division. The words Puri- 
tan and Non-conformist, like the word 
Eitualist, were party names. The time 
came when Puritans and Non-conformists 
were forced out, but so long as John Har- 
vard lived they were simply Low-Church 
members of the Church of England. They 
subtracted from the rubrics, as the Ritual- 



164 THE EDUCATION OF 

ists added to them, but they did not sep- 
arate. The loyal and affectionate words 
of Higginson and Winthrop express their 
relation to their brethren. It came to pass, 
indeed, in New England, partly by reason 
of distance, partly by reason of the attrac- 
tive sample of the Separatists of Plym- 
outh, partly on account of the extremes 
into which they were driven by controversy, 
that they set up a church order of their 
own. But of this John Harvard saw noth- 
ing in his native land. 

Cambridge had been an inhabited place 
from times immemorial. In the flat land 
by the little river the Britons had made 
a hill, heaping up the earth. Around this 
hill the Eomans had built a fort. On the 
site of the Eoman fort William the Con- 
queror had built a castle. And nearby, in 
1284, Bishop Hugh de Balsham, of Ely, had 
founded the first college and named it 
Peterhouse. Then another college had 
been founded and another, until, in John 
Harvard *s time, there were sixteen, with 



JOHN HARVARD 165 

masters, tutors, fellows, and students to the 
number of three thousand. 

It was, no doubt, the expectation in New 
England in 1636 that beside Harvard Col- 
lege would be other colleges, with other 
founders, as beside Peterhouse grew 
Kings' and Trinity, and that these, to- 
gether, would constitute a university. For 
in the minds of Englishmen of the seven- 
teenth century, university did not mean a 
combination of faculties, but a combination 
of colleges. The university gave examina- 
tions, conferred degrees, and provided cer- 
tain courses of lectures. The colleges pro- 
vided places of residence, kept men under 
regulation, and prepared them, each in its 
own fashion, to be examined. Take the 
fraternity houses of a small college, set in 
each a number of resident graduates called 
fellows, appoint a dean for discipline, and 
provide tutors, leaving the college to set 
the examinations and to conduct the exer- 
cises of commencement, and the place is 
transformed into a university of the Eng- 



166 THE EDUCATION OF 

lish type. Build the chapter houses after 
monastic models : a central quadrangle, on 
one side a dormitory, on another side a re- 
fectory, on the third a library, on the 
fourth a chapel, and a group of such resi- 
dences will be the heart of a university 
town. 

Such was the Cambridge to which John 
Harvard went at the age of twenty, and 
in Emmanuel College, then an establish- 
ment of sixty or seventy men, he took up 
his residence. 

The little town lay beside the Cam as the 
Massachusetts Cambridge lies beside the 
Charles, except that the English colleges 
passed the banks of the river. The gardens 
ran green to the water. The main street 
in the midst of the town curved, like Brat- 
tle Street, with the curves of the stream, 
and took a new name at almost every turn. 
It was a narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare, 
and the upper stories of the houses pro- 
jected over the way. There were plentiful 
materials for the plague, and once during 



JOHN HARVARD 167 

Harvard's residence the University liad to 
be dismissed on account of it. 

Midway in the course of the main street, 
in the heart of the town, was St. Mary's 
Church, where the University sermons 
were preached and public meetings were 
held. The church fronted on the market. 
Out of the market-place, away from the 
river, a short street led to Christ's Col- 
lege, founded by Lady Margaret, Henry 
VII 's mother. Here, in the garden, is still 
an aged mulberry, which Milton planted 
in John Harvard's time. On one side of 
Christ's College stood Sidney Sussex, on 
the other side, Emmanuel. 

Sidney Sussex and Emmanuel were the 
newest colleges, the only ones then in the 
University founded after the Eeformation. 
But they were seated in places long occu- 
pied by monasteries: Sidney Sussex on 
the site of a monastery of Franciscan 
Friars ; Emmanuel on the site of a monas- 
tery of Dominican friars. 

The two colleges were alike, not only 



168 THE EDUCATION OF 

in taking their places back from the river, 
where no room was left, but in being 
founded by Puritans for the advancement 
of Puritanism. It seemed to the founders 
that the supreme need of England was god- 
liness, and that the means thereto was 
preaching. So on the mediaeval founda- 
tions of preaching friars they established 
these training places for preachers. 

Emmanuel College was a divinity school. 
Founded in the reign of Elizabeth, it con- 
tinued until the reign of Charles II, a sem- 
inary for Puritan clergymen of the Church 
of England. It bore over its gate an in- 
scription to testify that Sir Walter Mild- 
may had established it for the study of 
theology. This matter Sir Walter made 
unmistakable in his nineteenth statute: 
** I wish all to understand, whether fel- 
lows, scholars, or even pensioners who are 
admitted into the college, that the one ob- 
ject which I set before me in erecting this 
college was to render as many as possible 
fit for the administration of the divine 



JOHN HARVARD 169 

word and sacraments; and that from this 
seed ground the English church might 
have those that she can summon to instruct 
the people and undertake the office of pas- 
tors, which is a thing necessary above all 
others. Therefore, let fellows and scholars 
who obtrude into the college with any other 
design than to devote themselves to sacred 
theology and, eventually, to labor in 
preaching the Word know that they are 
frustrating my hope and occupying the 
place of fellow or scholar contrary to my 
ordinance. ' ' 

Statutes may be put out of sight, as this 
one is in the present administration of the 
college, and ivy may grow over inscrip- 
tions, but in those days nobody could at- 
tend a service at Emmanuel without per- 
ceiving plainly the intention and the dis- 
position of the place. The founder had 
turned the chapel of the friars into a dining 
hall, and had the chapel north and south in- 
stead of east and west, in evident disregard 
of ecclesiastical tradition. As for the serv- 



170 THE EDUCATION OF 

ice, it was described in 1636 in a report 
made to Laud : * * Their chapel is not con- 
secrate. At surplice prayers they sing 
nothing but rhyming psalms of their own 
appointment instead of the hymns between 
the lessons. And lessons they read not 
after the order appointed in the calendar, 
but after another continued course of their 
own. All service is there done (psalms and 
hymns and all if they read any) by the 
minister alone. The students are not 
brought up nor accustomed to answer any 
verse at all. Before prayers begin the 
boys come in and sit down and put on and 
talk around of what they will. Their seats 
are placed round about and above the com- 
munion table. When they preach or com- 
monplace they omit all service after first or 
second lesson at the farthest." This is a 
graphic picture of non-conformity. These 
brethren were but exercising the freedom 
which they felt belonged to them of 
right as clergymen of the Church of 
England. 



JOHN HARVARD 171 

Such, was tlie little college in which John 
Harvard took up his studies in 1627. The 
course extended over four years, leading to 
the degree of bachelor of arts. For the 
master's degree men stayed three years 
longer. The subjects studied at Emmanuel 
did not differ greatly from those pursued 
in the other colleges, for all led to the same 
examinations, except that rather more at- 
tention was paid to theology and the 
interpretation of Holy Scripture. But al- 
ready in John Harvard's day Cambridge 
showed the characteristic bent towards 
mathematics. In Emmanuel, contemporary 
with him, were Wallis, who carried the 
study of mathematics farther than any 
man in England till the time of Newton, 
and Horrocks, who was the first to both 
predict and observe a transit of Venus. 
So far as Harvard's books show the bent 
of his mind, he did not care particularly 
for the arts of calculation. Neither does 
he appear to have had any great enthusi- 
asm for philosophy, which was another 



172 THE EDUCATION OF 

favorite study among his fellows. Aristotle 
was still the master of the mind at Cam- 
bridge, though at Emmanuel was a group 
of devout Platonists. There is a little nat- 
ural history among Harvard's books, and 
a little law, but most of the books are con- 
cerned with the Greek and Latin classics 
and the interpretation of the Bible. 

The college day began at five o'clock, 
when the bells rang for prayers. There 
were two meals, at eleven and three, with 
lectures, studies, and disputations between. 
There was the river for rowing, and the 
fields for archery and football. On Sunday 
morning all went for the university ser- 
mon to St. Mary's. At eight in the even- 
ing every man was expected to present 
himself in the room of his tutor, partly for 
the purpose of an evening prayer, and 
partly as evidence that he was within the 
college walls. At a quarter after nine the 
bell of St. Mary's rang, ending its peal as 
it does to this day with a tolling of the day 
of the month. At ten the college bell' 



JOHN HARVARD 173 

warned all hearers that the college gates 
were locked. 

The buildings were as severe within as 
they were stately without. There was 
plenty of carving and rich stained glass, 
but very little fire. In the bleak rooms 
three or four men were lodged together. 
If one of the company was a master of arts 
lie slept in the great bed and the under- 
graduates must be content with trundle 
beds, which, in the daytime, were trundled 
under the big bed out of sight. Life was 
pretty rough, as it was in the contemporary 
world. Even at Emmanuel there was more 
fighting and drinking and disturbance at 
prayers than one would expect in a Puri- 
tan divinity school. Offenders were flogged 
in public, a discipline which is commended 
to the president in the early statutes of 
Harvard College. 

At the same time there was high think- 
ing. Contemporary with Harvard in the 
university were Fuller, the historian ; Cra- 
shaw, the poet; Pearson, whose lectures on 



174 THE EDUCATION OF 

the creed are still studied in conservative 
schools of theology; More, the Platonist, of 
whom it is said that, rejecting Calvin, he 
came into ** a most joyous and lucid frame 
of minde ' ' ; Jeremy Taylor, the preacher, 
and, supreme among them all, John Mil- 
ton. Milton entered Cambridge two years 
before Harvard. They were both members 
of the University when he wrote his Ode on 
the Nativity, his lines on Shakespeare, and 
his * * II Penseroso. ' ' Both men came from 
London, and must have journeyed back 
and forth in the same conveyance. Hobson 
was then alive, whose impartial method of 
suiting his customers became a proverb. 
He was the first man in England to keep 
a livery stable. He had a monopoly of the 
carrying trade between the university and 
the metropolis. The two young men would 
naturally meet in the process of these 
journeys. 

It is to be hoped that the Puritanism of 
Harvard was of the gentle quality which 
shines in the verse of Milton. Having a 



JOHN HARVARD 175 

mother who had known Shakespeare from 
childhood, he may well have shared in Mil- 
ton's appreciation of that poet. Brought 
up as a boy at St. Saviour's, he may well 
have entered with the delight of Milton 
into the influences of that stately architec- 
ture. Certain it is that Whichcote, one of 
his fellow-students, master of King's in the 
troubled days which followed, saved that 
glorious chapel from harm at Puritan 
hands. 

A memorial window on the chapel of 
Emmanuel College shows the figures of 
John Harvard and Lawrence Chaderton. 
Chaderton was the first master of the col- 
lege, and though he was no longer in the 
discharge of his duties when Harvard was 
in residence, his influence was still very 
strong. He is remembered as a preacher 
of such eloquence that on one occasion after 
preaching for two hours and making ready 
to bring his sermon to a close, the congre- 
gation begged him to continue, which he 
did to the space of one hour longer. He 



176 THE EDUCATION OF 

was one of the revisers who made the King 
James version of the Bible, being on the 
committee to which was assigned the books 
from First Chronicles to Ecclesiastes. 
After him in the rectorship came Preston, 
some of whose books John Harvard had 
in his library, and Sandcroft, a man of 
liberal spirit. 

Under these masters the students who 
were contemporary with Harvard took 
some one side and some another in the con- 
tention between the High Church and the 
Low. Thus, of the two Pierreponts, one 
served the Parliament and the other served 
the King. There was Spurstowe, who was 
on the committee to treat with the King in 
his captivity, and who, having him thus at 
disadvantage, told him that unless he abol- 
ished episcopacy he would be damned ever- 
lastingly; and there was Bancroft, who 
became Archbishop of Canterbury. And 
quite apart from these vigorous partisans 
were philosophers of gentle spirit, the 
Platonists, of whom Whichcote and Cud- 



JOHN HARVARD 177 

worth were Harvard's fellow-students at 
Emmanuel, studying Plato in an atmos- 
phere of Aristotle, maintaining the free- 
dom of the will in the midst of Calvinism, 
and upholding the value of learning in the 
face of a generation disposed to accept a 
pious intention as a fair substitute for 
scholarship. 

Harvard completed his course with the 
degree of master of arts in 1635. Simonds 
D'Ewes, who was at that time in the col- 
lege, noted in his diary that the commence- 
ment sermon upheld the principles of 
popish doctrine and gave great offence to 
evangelical minds. It would have been 
pleasant to have had some account of the 
speech of the Prevaricator, a privileged 
person who had the right on that solemn 
occasion to make whatever remarks he 
chose. In 1635 Harvard was ordained. In 
his mother's will — she died in that year — 
he is called ** clerk." The same title, 
equivalent to ** clergyman, '* occurs in a 
deed which he made about that time at the 



178 THE EDUCATION OF 

sale of some property. Later lie is so styled 
in the will of his father-in-law. If he was 
ordained in his own diocese of Winchester, 
the ordaining bishop would have been 
Walter Curie; but he was a follower of 
Laud. The young Low Churchman may 
have sought some more congenial digni- 
tary. The records have not, as yet, ap- 
peared. 

In 1636 he was married at South Mailing 
Church to Ann Sadler, daughter of the rec- 
tor of the parish of Eingmer in Kent, and 
sister of a college friend. 

About this time he completed the col- 
lection of his library, the books which he 
left to the young college. These numbered 
over three hundred, mostly in two styles 
of bookmaking now rarely used, some of 
them being folios and some duodecimos, the 
big and the little side by side. The classics 
were represented by Homer, Plutarch, 
Pliny, Horace, and Cicero, with the satires 
of Juvenal and the comedies of Terence. 
Most of the books were theological, great 



JOHN HARVARD 179 

tomes of eager controversy written by men 
who wrote in a mighty passion, and read by 
men who clenched their fists in the prog- 
ress of the pages, now dreary and dull be- 
yond all modern patience. They have 
been, in many instances, replaced by dupli- 
cates in the library at Harvard College, 
but not with the idea of attracting readers. 
Three of these books have a certain per- 
sonal interest. One is ** Vox Civitatis," 
being a description of the plague which de- 
vastated London in the days so tragic and 
memorable for the Harvard household. 
Another is '* The Art and Science of Pre- 
serving Body and Soul in Health, Wisdom 
and the Catholic Eeligion," by Dr. John 
Jones. ** Eight profitable," says the 
author, *' for all persons, but chiefly for 
Princes, Eulers, Nobles, Bishops, Preach- 
ers, Parents, and those of the Parliament 
House." It is possible that young Har- 
vard consulted this book in the hope of 
finding some defence against those ills 
of body which already assailed him. The 



180 THE EDUCATION OF 

third book is *' A Little Description of 
the Great World," written by Heylin. 
He did not find here any information 
useful to one who was looking toward 
these shores, for Heylin confines his ac- 
count of this continent mostly to Mexico 
and Peru. His second edition was pub- 
lished in 1633, but even here he makes no 
mention of the settlement of Plymouth. 

For some reason, the young parson's 
mind was turned in this direction. Other 
Emmanuel men had already made their 
way to this country, and the memory and 
fame of them may have attracted him. 
There was William Blackstone, the first 
settler of Boston, a quiet person, detesting 
controversy, enough of a Low Churchman 
to dislike my lords the bishops, but enough 
of a High Churchman to dislike, also, my 
lords the brethren. There was John Cot- 
ton, once rector of St. Botolph's, now min- 
ister of Boston in New England. There 
were Francis Hooker, of Hartford, and 
Thomas Shepherd, of Cambridge. These 



JOHN HARVARD 181 

were great names among the men with 
whom John Harvard was congenial, and 
their example may well have seemed to him 
a pleasant one to follow. In February, 
1637, he sold some property in Southwark. 
In May, when the will of his brother 
Thomas was waiting for his signature, he 
was on the sea. On the 6th of August, 1637, 
he was admitted a freeman in Charlestown. 
When John Harvard and his wife ar- 
rived at Charlestown they found the whole 
colony absorbed in the controversy which 
had arisen concerning the teachings of 
Mrs. Hutchinson. It is likely that Har- 
vard's first sight of Cambridge was on the 
occasion of his attendance at the famous 
trial which resulted in Mrs. Hutchinson's 
excommunication. Thus he found that in 
removing to New England he had, indeed, 
changed the scenery and the architecture, 
and had substituted the brethren for the 
bishops, but that there was no real dif- 
ference in the prevailing disposition in 
religion. In America, as in England, 



182 THE EDUCATION OF 

there were two contending parties. Each 
was confident of its own right, and felt it- 
self conscientiously bound to put dissenters 
out. The chief difference between Arch- 
bishop Laud and Dr. Wilson, pastor in the 
church in Boston, was that Laud had bet- 
ter manners. Winthrop expressed the sit- 
uation when he said, after the synod in 
Cambridge, that the majority, *^ finding, 
upon consultation, that two so opposite 
parties could not continue in the same body 
without apparent hazard of ruin to the 
whole, agreed to send away some of 
the principals." It was the policy of 
i c Thorough ' ' which Charles and Strafford 
were pushing in England. In John Har- 
vard's day tolerance had not yet come into 
the order of the virtues. 

Like other Puritan congregations, the 
Charlestown church was ministered to by 
a pastor and a teacher. Lacking a teacher 
at that moment, they asked Harvard to dis- 
charge that duty, and he accepted the posi- 
tion. Johnson, who wrote the ** Wonder- 



JOHN HARVARD 183 

Working Providence/' and probably heard 
some of Harvard's preachings, says that 
he ** preached with tears and evidence of 
strong affection." This is our only sight 
of Harvard himself. On the fourteenth of 
September, 1638, he died, at the age of 
twenty-nine, leaving the will which has 
made his name immortal. The essential 
importance of his gift appears in the fact 
that, though the General Court appro- 
priated four hundred pounds for the col- 
lege, it had not paid it. Indeed, so poor 
was the General Court itself that it pres- 
ently borrowed two hundred pounds from 
the Harvard legacy. 

In January, 1696, Judge Sewall wrote in 
his diary: *' I lodged at Charlestown at 
Mrs. Shepherd's, who tells me that Mr. 
Harvard built that house. I lay in the 
chamber next the street. As I lay awake 
past midnight, in my meditation I was af- 
fected to consider how long ago God had 
made provision for my comfortable lodg- 
ing that night, seeing that was Mr. Har- 



184 EDUCATION OF JOHN HARVARD 

yard's house." The students of the Uni- 
versity to-day may echo that reflection, 
and may profitably be affected to consider 
how long ago God made provision for their 
education; seeing that is Mr. Harvard's 
college. 



THE FOREFATHERS OF 
JAMESTOWN 



THE FOREFATHERS OF 
JAMESTOWN 

THE emphasis of interest in the study 
of American history has rested upon 
Plymouth rather than upon Jamestown. 

This is due, in part, to the fact that 
Jamestown has not been a populated place 
for over two hundred years. The town 
was burned at the end of the seventeenth 
century, and was never rebuilt. Indeed, the 
very land on which the pioneers put their 
feet has long since fallen into the James 
Eiver. The river and the land were con- 
tending when the settlement began, and the 
river was, even then^ getting the best of it. 
The year of 1607 found a peninsula, but 
the peninsula became an island, and the 
island, year by year, lost ground. To-day, 
for the first time, the river is kept back 
by an effective barrier. Meanwhile Plym- 

187 



188 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

outh has lived its uninterrupted life, an ac- 
cessible place, attractive to visitors, pre- 
serving its traditions and its intimate 
memorials of the saints and heroes of the 
old time. 

Moreover, Plymouth has been a fertile 
soil for the substantial rooting of family- 
trees. All over the country there are per- 
sons whose ancestral past is associated 
with that place, and who hold it in rever- 
ence on that account. But few of the first 
families of Virginia go further back than 
1649. At that time, when the beheading of 
King Charles made England an unpleasant 
residence for many excellent people, there 
was a considerable increase of emigration 
into that Southern colony, whose sympa- 
thies were with the church and state which 
the Commonwealth had for the moment 
superseded. These newcomers found that 
the men who began and continued the set- 
tlement at Jamestown had for the most 
part died under the hardships of their diffi- 
cult life. The pioneers left few lineal sue- 



JAMESTOWN 189 

cessors. The colony at the beginning 
lacked the domestic element which was the 
joy and the salvation of the settlement at 
Plymouth. There were no children to per- 
petuate their names. Moreover, the new- 
comers, instead of settling at Jamestown, 
planted their farms all along the river as 
far as the falls at Eichmond. 

But the chief and prevailing disadvan- 
tage of Jamestown in its competition with 
Plymouth for the gratitude of good Amer- 
icans lay in the fact that it was so far away 
from Boston. It was unhappily beyond 
the power of any Jamestown man to repeat 
the daily devotions of Mr. Emerson, who 
said that every morning, when he opened 
the shutters of his bed-chamber and looked 
out, he thanked God that he lived in so fair 
a world, — and so near Boston. 

This distance is suggested but dimly on 
the map. The two colonies, Massachu- 
setts and Virginia, hundreds of miles apart 
geographically, were separated by a space 
of thousands of miles socially and ecclesi- 



190 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

astically. These differences were not in- 
herent in the nature or even in the disposi- 
tion of the original colonists. They grew 
gradually, as we shall see, out of the soil. 
In the beginning the men who settled in 
the south and the men who settled in the 
north were of the same sort, belonged to 
the same social class, and held, in the main, 
the same position in religion. 

As history comes to be studied in the 
light of human nature, some of its con- 
trasts lose their sharpness. It is perceived 
that nations are composed of men and 
women, and that men and women, with all 
their differences, are a good deal alike. It 
is not true of any of the hostile divisions 
of humanity that one side is made up of 
angels and the other side of animals. 
There are always good and bad, and wise 
and unwise, on both sides. The official 
statements of the differences are com- 
monly more exact and emphatic than the 
differences themselves. When a witty 
writer begins a book with the phrase. 



JAMESTOWN 191 

** The human race, to which so many of 
my readers belong, ' ' he is gently satirising 
an ancient blindness of historians. The dis- 
covery that all of our forefathers belonged 
to the human race, and thus had the same 
parts and passions, and were brother : and 
sisters in the same family, is causing his- 
tory to be written with a new understand- 
ing of old situations. This is notably the 
case as regards the contrasts which have 
long been the commonplaces of historians 
between the men who settled Plymouth and 
the men who settled Jamestown. It is now 
seen that the old adjectives, *^ Puritan," 
and ^ ^ Cavalier, ' ' do not adequately explain 
the difference between Virginia and Mas- 
sachusetts. The truth is that the James- 
town men and the Plymouth men were 
very much alike, both socially and 
ecclesiastically. 

As for their social standing, the settlers 
of both colonies were, for the most part, 
of the middle class, that is, as distinguished 
on the one side from the gentry, and on 



192 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

the other side from the peasantry. It is 
true that the father of Edward Wingfield, of 
Virginia, had had for sponsors Queen Mary 
and Cardinal Pole, but John Winthrop, of 
Massachusetts, was Edward Wingfield 's 
cousin. It is true that the early sailing 
lists to Virginia show the names of an in- 
ordinate number of ^ ^ gentlemen, ' ' and that 
the early sailing lists to Massachusetts 
show the names of an inordinate number of 
preachers of the gospel; and there is no 
doubt but that these two facts represent 
diverse and potent influences. But later 
lists corrected this disproportion. It is 
true, also, that when the Discovery ^ the 
Godspeed, and the Susan Constant made 
their first voyage, England was a pleasant 
and desirable residence for churchmen, 
and that, in 1630, when seventeen ships 
brought the people of a new exodus to these 
northern shores, England was not a pleas- 
ant or desirable residence for Puritans. 
And that signifies some difference in the 
quality of the colonists. There would nat- 



JAMESTOWN 193 

urally be a larger number of solid and 
successful men in the settlement of Mas- 
sachusetts than in the settlement of Vir- 
ginia. But the change in the political for- 
tunes of the two parties speedily changed 
that. In the time of Cromwell, England 
was as inhospitable to churchmen, as she 
had been to Puritans in the times of James 
and of Charles, and the church colony 
improved accordingly. 

The society of Virginia and the society 
of Massachusetts developed differently, 
but the differences were mainly due not 
to an original unlikeness in the men, but to 
an original unlikeness in the land. The 
land in Massachusetts was adapted to the 
growth of small towns ; the land in Virginia 
was adapted to the growth of great estates. 
The northern settlers gathered into little 
communities by the harbors of the sea and 
by the falls of the rivers under conditions 
which fostered democracy. But in the 
south it was soon found that the best crop 
was tobacco. When Governor Argall ar- 



194 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

rived in Jamestown in 1616, he found to- 
bacco growing in the street ; it had invaded 
the towns. Tobacco plants and towns did 
not thrive together. Even in 1624 there 
were only two communities in Virginia 
which consisted of clustered houses as in a 
New England village. The cultivation of 
tobacco demanded wide tracts of land, and 
a great amount of unskilled labor. In the 
midst of his estates, surrounded by em- 
ployes of a lower social class, and sepa- 
rated from his neighbors by several miles 
of bad road, the Virginian settler lived in 
his great house. These were conditions 
which fostered aristocracy. But it was an 
American aristocracy, with very slight con- 
nections with England. It met in parish 
meetings, as the Massachusetts people met 
in town meetings. And it produced George 
Washington. With its good and its ill, it 
was the result, not of a different kind of 
settler, but of a different kind of soil. 

Also, in religion, the men of Jamestown 
and the men of Massachusetts Bay, even of 



JAMESTOWN 195 

Plymouth, were of the same stock. There 
were obvious differences which, because 
they are obvious, have been overestimated, 
but they were mainly superficial. The men 
of Jamestown were churchmen, that is, 
they were of the Church of England, or, as 
we say in this country. Episcopalians. And 
that seems to make them very different 
from the Independents of Plymouth and 
the Presbyterians of Boston. But the idea 
is what is called in logic the fallacy of the 
undistributed middle. For example, we 
used to be taught in school that the Amer- 
ican Eevolution was fought between the 
Americans on one side and the British on 
the other, and an easy inference was that 
we, as good Americans, ought to hate the 
British. But the truth is that the War of 
the Eevolution was fought between the 
Whigs and the Tories: and there were 
Tories in America as well as in England, 
and Whigs in England as well as in Amer- 
ica. It happened that in England at that 
moment the Tories were in power, so they 



196 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

represented England officially, but they did 
not represent Edmund Burke or William 
Pitt, or any of their party. Thus, instead 
of England making war upon America, we 
have an English political party, tempo- 
rarily in power, carrying on that war 
against the protests of another English 
party, temporarily out of power. 

The same confusion has attended the 
use of the phrase ^' Church of England." 
For in the Church of England, as in the 
nation, there have been, since the Eef orma- 
tion, and are to this day, two parties as 
distinct and different as Whigs and Tories. 
The original name, and still the best name 
for them, was the Old Learning and the 
New Learning: that is, on one side were 
men whose sympathies were with the me- 
diaeval church, and on the other side were 
men whose sympathies were with the re- 
formed church. Sometimes one of these 
parties was in popular power, and some- 
times the other. In the reign of Edward 
the Sixth, the New Learning was dominant. 



JAMESTOWN 197 

under Arclibisliop Cranmer; in the reign 
of Charles the First, the Old Learn- 
ing was dominant, under Archbishop 
Laud. In the time of Elizabeth, after the 
mediseval reaction under Mary, nearly two 
hundred clergymen of the Old Learning 
were turned out by the party of the New 
Learning, among them being fourteen 
bishops and twelve presidents of colleges. 
In the time of Charles the Second, after the 
reform reaction under Cromwell, eighteen 
hundred clergymen of the New Learning 
were turned out by the party of the Old- 
Learning. But these were consequences of 
national revolution : commonly the two par- 
ties live in peace together. Together they 
compose the church, as Eepublicans and 
Democrats compose the state. Their joint 
existence occasions that diversity of ritual 
and of opinion which is one of the most 
notable characteristics of the Episcopal 
Church. * 

Now, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century the men of the New Learning, the 



198 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

men whom we now call Low Churclimen 
and Broad Churclimen, were in part con- 
servative and in part radical. The differ- 
ence between them has been happily com- 
pared to the differences, before our Civil 
War, between the Eepublicans and the 
Abolitionists. In 1607 the radical Low 
Churchmen had gone out of the church, 
and in the fall of that year a company of 
them went out of the country, and estab- 
lished themselves in Holland. These were 
our forefathers, who came afterwards to 
Plymouth. In 1630 a thousand conserva- 
tive Low Churchmen came to these shores, 
landing at Salem and settling presently in 
Boston. These were they who said as they 
departed: *^ Farewell, dear England! 
Farewell, the Church of God in England, 
and all the Christian friends there ! We do 
not go to New England as Separatists 
from the Church of England, though we 
cannot but separate from the corruptions 
of it.'' These were they in whose behalf 
John Winthrop wrote, ^' We desire you 



JAMESTOWN 199 

would be pleased to take notice of the prin- 
cipals and body of our company as those 
who esteem it our honour to call the Church 
of England from which we rise our dear 
mother, and we cannot part from our na- 
tive country where she specially resideth, 
without much sadness of heart, and tears 
in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such 
hope and part as we have obtained in the 
common salvation, we have received it in 
her bosom, and suckt it from her breasts." 
It was such men as these who had come in 
1607 and settled at Jamestown. 

That these companies of colonists at 
Salem and at Jamestown developed differ- 
ently in religion was due, in part, to the dif- 
ference of a score of years in the time of 
their landing, for in that period the politi- 
cal and ecclesiastical contentions in Eng- 
land had sharpened the differences between 
the church parties to a degree unknown 
at the settlement of Jamestown. It was 
also due, in part, to the influence of our an- 
cestors at Plymouth. Under this influence, 



wo THE FOREFATHERS OF 

tke conservatives became radicals, and 
separated themselves from the church. 
But, at the beginning, the founders of Mas- 
sachusetts and the founders of Virginia 
were all of the same religion ; all Calvinists 
in doctrine, all Puritans, and all — except 
at Plymouth — members of the Church of 
England. 

How far the northern and southern col- 
onies, thus alike, became different in the 
course of time is plain in the accusation of 
atheism which the Puritans of Boston made 
against Morton of Merrymount. Mr. John 
Fiske says that the chief ground on which 
they held Morton to be an atheist was that 
he was accustomed to use the Book of 
Common Prayer! And this hostility is 
further indicated in that pleasant story 
about Governor Winthrop's books and 
rats. Winthrop had a lot of books stored 
in a loft, together with some corn. One of 
the books was the New Testament and the 
Prayer-book bound together. The rats got 
in and ate the corn and destroyed a part 



JAMESTOWN 201 

of that book. They completely demolished 
the Common Prayer, leaving the New Tes- 
tament scrupulously untouched. That 
seemed to Winthrop an exercise of the di- 
vine discrimination. That was in every 
way a proper disposition of the Book of 
Common Prayer. 

And here comes in the curious condition 
which worked the discomfiture of the fame 
of Jamestown. 

For a long time all of the *^ articulate 
classes " lived in the near neighborhood 
of Boston. The writers of books, the "ora- 
tors, the preachers, the poets, the histori- 
ans, and presently the makers of profitable 
reading for schools, were all residents 
within an easy radius of Beacon Hill. 
To these audible and influential persons the 
adventures and achievements of their own 
ancestors had a natural and dominant in- 
terest. Plymouth was close at hand. As 
for Jamestown, not only was it so remote 
that they rarely thought about it, but when 
they did think about it they disliked it. In 



202 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

all honesty, they disregarded or disparaged 
it. And this prejudice they communicated 
to the children in the schools. Even to this 
day it is commonly taken for granted 
among intelligent people, that our charac- 
teristic institutions, and especially our lib- 
erties, civil and religious, began at Plym- 
outh. As a matter of historical fact, they 
began a dozen years before, at Jamestown. 

The story of Jamestown is in three chap- 
ters: the Landing; the Tragedy; the Set- 
tlement. 

All attempts at American colonization 
by individual adventurers having failed, a 
new start was made in 1606 by introducing 
into the enterprise the joint- stock method. 
In that year James I chartered the Vir- 
ginia Company. The land thus granted ex- 
tended along the Atlantic Coast from Cape 
Fear to the Bay of Fundy. It was divided 
into three parts, of which the southern, 
from Cape Fear to the Potomac, was as- 
signed to a group of proprietors who from 
their residence in London were called the 



JAMESTOWN 203 

London Company. The northern portion, 
from Long Island Sound to the Bay of 
Fundy, was assigned to another group of 
proprietors, who, from their residence in 
and about Plymouth in Devonshire, were 
called the Plymouth Company. The middle 
section was to be awarded to such colonists 
of either company as should first establish 
self-supporting settlements in it. Each of 
these tracts extended back to the Pacific 
Ocean, which was thought to be one or two 
hundred miles distant across the country. 

On New Year's Day, 1607, the London 
Company sent three ships to sea, — the Dis- 
covery, the Godspeed, and the Susan Con- 
stant. The names fitted well the aspira- 
tions of the men who in the spirit of ad- 
venture and of religion were seeking to set 
up a new home in a foreign land. 

The commander of the fleet was Captain 
Christopher Newport, who had once re- 
trieved the fortunes of Sir Walter Ealeigh 
by capturing a Spanish treasure-ship 
whose cargo was worth four million dol- 



204 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

lars. The council of the colony was com- 
posed of Bartholomew Gesnold, Edward 
Wingfield, John Smith, John Katcliffe, 
John Martin, and George Randall. The 
chaplain was Robert Hunt, ^ ^ an honest, re- 
ligious and courageous Divine '' of the 
English Church. 

Of these men, the most eminent and dra- 
matic was John Smith. Bearing as he did 
the most commonplace of names, he had 
nevertheless lived a life crowded so full of 
romantic adventure that some very sober 
historians have accounted it too interesting 
to be true. Smith of late years has fallen 
under a serious suspicion, which has arisen 
in part from the new methods of historians. 

How pleasantly does Plutarch begin his 
life of Theseus. He confesses that there 
are fables in the accounts of antiquity, but 
he regrets that in some of them the fabu- 
lous element is so obvious, since otherwise 
he * ' might have graced them with some ap- 
pearance of historical narration. ' ' And as 
for the statements which he proposes to 



JAMESTOWN 205 

present to the reader with this grace of his- 
toricity, '^ if by chance in some places they 
range a little too boldly out of the bounds 
or limits of true appearance and have no 
manner of conforming with any credible- 
ness of matter, the readers in courtesy 
must needs have me excused, accepting in 
good part that which may be written and 
reported of thmgs so extremely old and an- 
cient." That is, Plutarch frankly tries to 
please. 

Not so, the remote successor of Plutarch 
engaged in writing and reporting things 
old and ancient. Even old and ancient, 
and presumably venerable men — not to 
mention things— are here put upon a cross- 
examination. The only presupposition 
which some writers seem to permit them- 
selves is the general proposition that all 
the persons whom we used to think were 
good were really bad, and those we used 
to revere as saints were really sinners like 
ourselves. The classic instance is Mr. 
Fronde's rehabilitation of King Henry into 



206 THE FOREFATHEBS OF 

the character of a faithful and tender hus- 
band. And it has been predicted that we 
shall presently discover that Nero, instead 
of fiddling while Eome burned, really 
played a violin at a concert given for the 
benefit of the sufferers. Another canon of 
contemporary historical criticism declares 
that any statement which is made by one 
person only is to be regarded as probably 
untrue. All respectable facts will be ac- 
companied by other facts to identify them. 
Unhappily for Smith, most of his adven- 
tures took place in remote regions, without 
the observation of reporters, and all that 
we know about them is what he tells him- 
self. It is a remarkable story. Smith's 
parents died in his early childhood, and 
left him to the care of guardians who were 
much more interested in his property than 
in his education. Thus in the course of 
time he easily got their permission to seek 
his fortune, and went to the wars which 
were perennially in progress on the conti- 
nent of Europe. Tiring of this activity 



JAMESTOWN 207 

after a few years he came home and, seek- 
ing a secluded spot amidst the woods, de- 
voted himself to the diligent reading of 
Marcus Aurelius and Machiavelli, two writ- 
ers who bore little more in common than 
the coincidence that their names begin with 
the same letter. But this, too, failed to sat- 
isfy Smith's restless spirit, and again he 
sought the enthusiastic land of France. 
There he fell in with thieves who, having 
plundered him of all his possessions, left 
him for dead. He was found, however, by 
a friendly farmer, in whose house he was 
nursed back to life. After that he went to 
sea; and the winds blew and the masts 
broke, and down went the ship into the 
great deep; but Smith was a good swim- 
mer, and made his way to shore. But the 
shore, on exploration, proved to be at- 
tached to a desert island, and it appeared 
that, having escaped the perils of the water, 
the great adventurer was fated to perish 
by starvation. His luck, however, contin- 
ued constant; there came along a compas- 



208 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

sionate ship and picked him up, and off he 
went on the way to Egypt. Eeturning in 
the same ship, they fell in with a richly 
freighted argosy from Venice, of whose 
treasures they promptly possessed them- 
selves, and in the distribution of the spoil 
a good share came to Smith. He wandered 
for some months, seeing the sights of Italy, 
but his spirit was unsatisfied and he offered 
his sword as a volunteer against the Turks. 
It was in this campaign that there took 
place the crowning exploit of his life. 

They were besieging the town of Eegal, 
and the days grew dull. Neither the be- 
siegers nor the besieged were in the mood 
for fighting. At last the Turks suggested 
a tournament. It would please the ladies, 
they said, if the lists might be set in sight 
of the walls and there might be some brisk 
engagements of champions. This was more 
than acceptable to the Christians. And so 
it was. The Turks chose a champion, and 
the Christians, on their side, casting lots, 
the lot fell on Smith. And out came the 



JAMESTOWN 209 

Turk and Smith, in view of both the ex- 
pectant armies, each with his lance. And 
Smith was so fortunate as to drive his 
lance through the body of his adversary, 
and thus to win the day. On the morrow, 
the Turks challenged Smith by name to try 
the fortunes of the fight again. This time 
they fought with swords, and Smith was 
again able to give his opponent a mortal 
wound. But this occurred a third time; 
on the third day a new Turk with a battle 
axe fell upon Smith, but Smith's axe hewed 
a better line, and the third Turk followed 
the other two. 

This tale, which makes a stiffer demand 
upon the reader's credulity than any of the 
others, is happily attested by three quite 
independent evidences. One is an Italian 
book entitled ^^ The Wars of Transylva- 
nia," from which the Eev. Samuel Purchas, 
in 1625, quoted a long account of this adven- 
ture on the authority of one of the secre- 
taries of Prince Sigismund. Another is an 
entry at the Heralds' College in London, 



210 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

recording the grant of a coat-of-arms * * to 
John Smith, captain of 250 soldiers, in 
memory of three Turks' heads, which with 
his sword before the town of Eegal he did 
overcome, kill and cut off, in the province 
of Transylvania. ' ' A third is the fact that 
when Smith explored the New England 
coast in 1614 he named three little islands 
in the neighborhood of Cape Anne the 
Turks' Heads. 

Then Smith's luck turned and the winds 
of fortune blew from the opposite quarter. 
At the battle of Eothenthurm he was 
taken prisoner and was carried to Constan- 
tinople as a slave. But there he attracted 
the kind attention and sympathy, and per- 
haps the affection, of the lady Tragabi- 
zanda, in whose house he served. She sent 
him to her brother, the pasha of Nalbrits, 
beyond the Sea of Azof; but her good of- 
fices in his behalf were disregarded. Smith 
was dressed in the skin of a wild beast, had 
an iron collar about his neck, and was both 
overworked and beaten. One day, how- 



JAMESTOWN 211 

ever, getting the pasha conveniently alone, 
he knocked him down, pounded the life out 
of him, dressed himself in the dead man's 
clothes, took the dead man's horse, and 
away he went into the deserts. Finally he 
found some friendly Russians, and made 
his way back to Prince Sigismund at Leip- 
sic, and thence by easy stages to England, 
where he arrived just in time to join the 
expedition which was being fitted out for 
Jamestown. 

This is indeed a story of considerable 
dimensions. Our acceptance or rejection 
of it should be determined, the cautious his- 
torians tell us, by our estimation of the 
character of Smith. Happily, there are 
sufficient materials for making such an es- 
timate. John Smith was as ready with his 
pen as with his sword. His published 
works occupy several fat volumes. They 
do not at all support the charge of boast- 
fulness. He tells his adventures with the 
straightforwardness of a sturdy soldier. 
We have also the testimony of contempo- 



212 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

raries, some of them Ms friends, others, — 
by reason of contentions over the affairs of 
the colony, — his enemies. He is accused 
of impatience and a hasty temper and a 
disposition to take control of the situation, 
but not of any narrow self-conceit. As for 
his friends, one of them, after Smith went 
back from Jamestown to England, wrote 
this concerning him : 

** Thus we lost him that in all our pro- 
ceedings made justice his chief guide . . . 
ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and in- 
dignity more than any dangers ; that never 
allowed more for himself than his soldiers 
with him ; that upon no danger would send 
them where he would not lead them him- 
self ; that would never see us want what he 
either had or could by any means get us ; 
that would rather want than borrow, or 
starve than not pay ; that loved action more 
than words, and hated falsehood and covet- 
ousness worse than death; whose adven- 
tures were our lives and whose loss our 
deaths." 



JAMESTOWN 218 

The little company, thus provided with 
a council, a chaplain, and a hero, consisted 
of 105 persons ; almost exactly the number 
of those who came in 1620, in the May- 
floiuer. The expedition was a commercial 
enterprise. It was not undertaken, like 
the settlement at Plymouth, under the 
stress of ecclesiastical conditions, nor pri- 
marily for the advancement of religion. 
But it was sent forth in a religious spirit. 
** The way to prosper and achieve good 
success,'' said the paper of instructions, 
** is to make yourselves all of one mind 
for the good of the country and your own, 
and to serve and fear God, the giver of all 
goodness, for every plantation which our 
Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be 
rooted up." 

After a long and stormy passage, the 
three ships entered Chesapeake Bay in the 
last week in April, and made their w-ay into 
Hampton Eoads. The name Point Com- 
fort testifies to their relief and joy. Sail- 
ing up the wide river which they named 



214 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

for King James, their patron, they disem- 
barked on the 13th of May at a little penin- 
sula. They called the place Jamestown, 
thus connecting the King^s name with Eng- 
glish Christianity in America, as it was 
soon to be connected with the English 
Bible. The land was low, and, as the col- 
onists discovered later to their cost, was 
marshy and malarious. But it was far 
enough up the river to be out of the easy 
reach of Spaniards, and the narrow neck 
of land which connected it with the shore 
seemed well adapted for defence against 
the Indians. And in the spring, and after 
the discomforts of the sea, the place seemed 
a Garden of Eden. The birds sang, the 
flowers bloomed, the trees invited the way- 
farers to the safety and rest of their cool 
shadows, and the hearts of the colonists 
beat high. One of them, George Percy, 
gives an account of the landing: 

*' After much and weary search (with 
their barge coasting still before, as Virgil 
writeth ^neas did, arriving in the region 



JAMESTOWN 215 

of Italy called Latium upon tlie banks of 
the river Tiber) in the country of a Wero- 
wance called Wo-Win-Chapunka (a di- 
tionary to Powhatan) within this fair river 
of Paspiheigh, which we have called the 
King's Eiver, they selected an extended 
plain and spot of earth, which thrust out 
into the depth and midst of the channel, 
making a kind of Chersonesus or penin- 
sula. The trumpets sounding, the admiral 
struck sail, and before the same the rest 
of the fleet came to anchor, and here to 
lose no further time the colony disem- 
barked, and every man brought his par- 
ticular store and furniture, together with 
the general provision, ashore; for the 
safety of which, as likewise for their own 
security, ease and better accommodating, 
a certain canton and quantity of that little 
half-island was measured, which they be- 
gan to fortify, and thereon in the name of 
God to raise a fortress, with the ablest and 
speediest means they could. ' ' 
The landing took place on Wednesday. 



216 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

On Thursday they set about the erection 
of a fort, a three-cornered structure with 
a cannon at each angle. They prepared 
for Sunday by hanging up an old sail, fas- 
tening it to three or four trees, to shelter 
them from sun and rain; seats they made 
of logs ; a bar of wood between the trees 
served for a pulpit. This was the Sunday 
after Ascension Day. The words of the 
Epistle, ^ ^ The end of all things is at hand," 
might have sounded for the moment as a 
prophecy of disaster; but they prayed, 
^' We beseech Thee, Lord, leave us not 
comfortless," and the ascription, ** That 
God in all things may be glorified through 
Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and do- 
minion forever and ever," expressed the 
desires of their souls. 

'' This," says Smith, in words which en- 
able us to see that sight with the eyes of 
one who was himself a part of it, *' this 
was our church, till we built a homely thing 
like a barne, set upon cratchets, covered 
with rafts, sedge and earth, so was also the 



JAMESTOWN 217 

walls : the best of our houses [were] of the 
like curiosity : but for the most part farre 
much worse workmanship that could nei- 
ther well defend [from] wind nor raine/' 
First the fort, for the preservation of their 
lives ; then the Church for the salvation of 
their souls; this was the order of their 
building. ' ' We had daily Common Prayer 
morning and evening/' says Smith, ^ ' every 
Sunday two sermons, and every three 
months the Holy Communion, till our min- 
ister died; but our prayers daily, with a 
homily on Sundaies, we continued two or 
three years after, till more preachers 
came.'' There in the wilderness, with the 
river before, and the unbroken forest be- 
hind, every day began and ended with the 
Prayer-book prayers. 

The settlers had immediate need of all 
the means of grace. Hardly had their 
landing been effected when the scene 
changed to tragedy. This was the result 
of three influences. It came in part from 
the savages, in part from the swamps, and 



218 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

in part from the inexperience and incom- 
petence of the settlers. 

The savages belonged to the same Algon- 
quin race as those who met our fathers in 
New England, but the New England In- 
dians had been depleted by pestilence and 
disheartened by defeat, and were in little 
mood to fight. The Virginia Algonquins 
were in good savage form. Within a space 
of two weeks from the landing, they came 
upon the settlement, two hundred strong, 
and made a fierce attack. One they killed, 
several they wounded with their arrows; 
and thereafter, for a long time, they lurked 
behind the trees watching for unwary white 
men. They were a terror and a menace at 
Plymouth, but at Jamestown they were 
persistent, active, and aggressive enemies. 

Out of the early stages of this peril the 
colonists were saved by the coolness and 
courage of John Smith. He was small of 
stature, but afraid of nothing; and he had 
a way of scaring savages by looking at 
them which was as good as a battery of 



JAMESTOWN 219 

guns. He saved the colony. Without him, 
the settlement at Jamestown would have 
perished miserably, like its predecessors. 
His famous encounter with Powhatan, and 
his rescue by Pocahontas, fit excellently 
with the lists at Regal and the tender in- 
terest of Tragabizanda. Happily, this 
adventure is attested by the fact that the 
account of it was printed in London at a 
time when there were residing in that city 
not only several persons who bore the cap- 
tain no good will, but the heroine herself. 
If it had been untrue, or even exaggerated, 
contradiction would have been easy. This 
exploit brought about a truce between the 
red men and the whites, but the fighting 
began again; until in 1622, the Indians 
arose one dark night and effected a general 
massacre, killing one out of ten all along 
the thin line of settlements from James- 
town to Richmond. So effective, however, 
was the revenge of the colony that from 
that time the Indians ceased to be a 
dreaded foe. 



220 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

Meanwhile, tragedy came from the ma- 
larious swamps. The first hot summer at 
Jamestown, like the first cold winter at 
Plymouth, killed half of the company. 
George Percy, who described the landing 
in such good spirits, gives this account of 
the fever time which followed : 

6i There were never Englishmen left in 
a foreign country in such misery as we 
were in this new discovered Virginia. We 
watched every three nights, lying on the 
bare cold ground, what weather soever 
came; and waded all the next day; which 
brought our men to be most feeble 
wretches. Our food was but a small can 
of barley sodden in water, to ^ve men a 
day. Our drink, cold water taken out of 
the river; which was at a flood very salt; 
at a low tide full of slime and filth ; which 
was the destruction of many of our men. 
Thus we lived for the space of five months 
(Aug. 1607 — Jan. '08) in this miserable 
distress, not having five able men to man 
our bulwarks upon any occasion. If it had 



JAMESTOWN 221 

not pleased God to put a terror in the 
savages' hearts, we had all perished by 
those wild and cruel Pagans, being in that 
weak estate as we were ; our men night and 
day groaning in every corner of the fort 
most pitiful to hear. If there were any 
conscience in men, it should make their 
hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful murmur- 
ings and outcries of our sick men without 
relief, every night and day for the space 
of six weeks; some departing out of the 
world; many times three or four in a 
night; in the morning their bodies being 
trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be 
buried. ' ' 

All this distress was aggravated by the 
ignorance of the settlers themselves. The 
English nation was in the painful process 
of learning the difficult art of colonization ; 
a lesson whose pages are written by the 
hard hand of experience. They did not 
know what sort of place it was to which the 
colony was bound. There was a common 
notion that it was a place of great wealth. 



222 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

A popular play, acted in 1605, had charmed 
the ears and dazzled the eyes of the adven- 
turous with descriptions of its golden 
shores. 

^* I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there 
than copper is with us. . . "Why, man, all 
their dripping pans are pure gold ; and all 
the chains with which they chain up their 
streets are massy gold; all the prisoners 
they take are fettered in gold ; and for ru- 
bies and diamonds they go forth on holi- 
days and gather 'em by the seashore to 
hang on their children's coats, and stick 
in their children's caps, as commonly as 
our children wear saffron-gilt brooches 
and groats with holes in 'em." 

This had attracted into the expedition 
to Jamestown a number of unstable and 
adventurous spirits. There was a lack of 
practical persons, who know what to do 
with their hands. The ' ' gentlemen ' ' out- 
numbered the farmers and the carpenters. 
The first settlers were mostly city men, 
from London ; who had no idea of even the 



JAMESTOWN gSS 

elementary principles of getting a living 
in the woods. They could neither hnnt nor 
fish. The result was that they starved. 
Supplies of colonists came again and again, 
but they added new mouths rather than 
new hands. Industrial conditions in Eng- 
land contributed another element to the 
colonial situation in Virginia. The land 
had not yet recovered from the social 
changes consequent upon the dissolution of 
the monasteries. When agriculture began 
to give place to sheep-raising, this turned 
great numbers of small farms into wide 
ranges of pasture land, and left farm labor- 
ers without employment. Moreover, the 
unprecedented increase in the amount of 
available gold from the mines of Peru had 
caused a calamitous rise in prices, thus 
magnifying the cost of living. The idle 
people, victims of these various changes, 
offered a tremendous economic problem 
for which the colonies seemed to offer some 
solution. For the good of England, num- 
bers of these people were transported to 



$im THE FOREFATHERS OF 

these shores. The good of America was 
not especially considered. 

When Smith, injured by an explosion of 
powder, left for England in October, 1609, 
there were five hundred persons in the com- 
munity. In May, 1610, when Gates arrived, 
only sixty of them still lived. Some had 
been killed by the Indians, some had died 
of the cold in the fierce winter; some had 
starved to death. The cabins, as their oc- 
cupants perished, were burned for fuel; 
nobody daring to venture into the woods 
for fear of the savages. Jamestown had 
become a cemetery rather than a settle- 
ment. When Gates came with new colo- 
nists — themselves the survivors of a ship- 
wreck — and the forlorn men met in the 
church to consider the situation, it was de- 
termined to abandon the place. And they 
did abandon it. They were in their boats 
on the river, making their way to the sea, 
when suddenly the ships of Lord Delaware 
appeared, with new men, new provisions, 
and new courage, and they turned back. 



JAMESTOWN 225 

From that time, the fortunes of the col- 
ony were never in doubt. Even the general 
massacre did not discourage the colonists. 
They had planted the roots of their settle- 
ment deep in the soil. They had definitely 
established the first permanent residence 
of Englishmen upon these shores. But at 
what a cost! Between 1607 and 1625, five 
thousand persons landed at Jamestown. 
In 1625 only a thousand of these remained 
alive. Such were the tragic conditions 
under which English civilization was 
founded on this continent. 

There was civilization here before that; 
the French were in Canada and the Span- 
iards were in Florida, but this was Latin 
civilization. It differed from English in 
its theory as to the right residence of 
power. According to the Latin idea, power 
should be centralized; it resides properly 
in the hand of one man. According to the 
English idea, power should be distributed; 
it resides properly in the hands of many 
men. These theories lead in very differ- 



226 THE FOREFATHERS OF 

ent directions; the Latin theory toward 
a monarchy in politics and a papacy in 
religion; the English theory towards de- 
mocracy and Protestantism. Upon the 
success or failure of the particular ex- 
periment depended the whole constitution 
of American life. The men who died be- 
side the James Eiver in the maintenance 
of that colony, died that English civ- 
ilization, with all that thereunto pertains, 
might live. They were the pioneers, the 
heroes, the martyrs, of all our liberties. 

When Lord Delaware came, and the col- 
ony was raised from death to life, it was in 
the church that the men said their thanks- 
givings and their prayers. And the new 
life thus begun was lived in the sight of 
the church tower and in the sound of the 
church bell. Lord Delaware adorned the 
church with chancel furniture of walnut 
and pews of cedar. Every morning at ten 
and every afternoon at four the settlers 
were called to service. The place was 
sweet with flowers, and gay with the red 



JAMESTOWN 227 

cloaks of Delaware's fifty halberdiers. 
There Pocahontas was married, with many 
Indians attending. There they had two 
sermons every Sunday, and, in pleasant 
anticipation of a good Boston custom, 
a lecture every Thursday. There the Rev. 
Richard Buck, who had been wrecked with 
Gates on the Bermudas, in the midst of 
adventures of which Shakespeare made 
use in ^ ^ The Tempest, ' ' was the pastor of 
the parish. For that is what the colony 
was, an English parish, established on 
these shores, gathered about the parish 
church. 

In this parish church were enacted two 
significant scenes which represent still fur- 
ther the likeness between the men of 
Jamestown and the men of Plymouth. The 
two colonies not only shared in the same 
experience of tragedy, and not only showed 
the same regard for religion, but they were 
animated by the same enthusiasm for civil 
liberty. In the Jamestown church was 
held the first American representative as- 



S28 THE FOREFATHERS OP 

sembly; and within the same walls oc- 
curred the first American revolution. 

In 1619, the year before the landing of 
the Pilgrims, the first American represen- 
tative assembly was convened at James- 
town. There had been some mismanage- 
ment in the colony, and laying down of laws 
obnoxious to the people, and the settlers 
asked that they might rule themselves. The 
request came to Sir Edwin Sandys, the 
leading spirit of the Virginia company, who 
was at that moment assisting our fathers 
at Leyden to arrange their emigration to 
Plymouth. He was of the party of the 
Parliament as opposed to the party of the 
King, and the request was congenial with 
all his principles. Thus the company 
granted it, and the governor appointed by 
the company summoned the assembly. 
Each settlement in the colony sent repre- 
sentatives to meet the governor and the 
appointed council. The governor and 
council sat in the chancel, the burgesses sat 
in the body of the church. The Eev. Kich- 



JAMESTOWN 229 

ard Buck opened the first session with a 
prayer that it would please God to guide 
and sanctify all the proceedings to His 
own glory and the good of the plantation. 
There in the name of God and in the church 
of God, our free government had its begin- 
ning. The first American Congress con- 
tinued to hold its meetings in the James- 
town church for twenty years. 

The laws which were enacted by the 
House of Burgesses touched the same notes 
which were soon to be sounded in New Eng- 
land. They regulated the conduct of the 
people : they provided penalties for drunk- 
enness, for excess in apparel, for slander, 
for profane swearing. They enacted ' ^ for 
the better observation of the Sabbath '' 
that no person * ^ shall take a voyage upon 
the same, except it be to church or for other 
cases of extreme necessity." They re- 
quired that every master of a family when 
he came to church should bring with him 
a serviceable gun, and they passed without 
a dissenting voice this declaration : * ' That 



SBO THE FOREFATHERS OF 

the governor shall not lay any taxes or im- 
positions upon the colony, otherwise than 
by the authority of the general assembly, 
to be levied and employed as the said as- 
sembly shall appoint.'' 

In 1635, the year before the founding 
of Harvard College, this assembly rose up 
against the governor, and sent him back a 
prisoner to England, to his royal master. 
Governor Harvey had made himself vari- 
ously objectionable. He had been found 
arrogant and avaricious, not to say dis- 
honest. He had proclaimed laws on his 
own authority. He had sided with Mary- 
land in a dispute between the colonies. He 
had finally removed the secretary of state, 
whom everybody liked, and had appointed 
another of whom everybody disapproved. 
The people held a massmeeting, to voice 
their indignation, and the next day the gov- 
ernor had the speakers arrested. He de- 
manded that the council should send them 
to the gallows. But the patience of the 
burgesses was now exhausted. They vio- 



JAMESTOWN 231 

lently laid hands on the governor, and 
thrust him out of his government, and sent 
him back to answer to King Charles. It 
was the first American revolution, the first 
dramatic negative pronounced by English- 
men in America against the oppression of 
a representative of the crown. It was the 
splendid spirit of the Puritans of Massa- 
chusetts in the souls of the churchmen of 
Virginia. 

The brick church, whose tower remains, 
was built in 1639. As the century ap- 
proached its end, this church was the scene 
of the establishing of the second college in 
this country, the College of William and 
Mary. The massacre of 1622 had post- 
poned until this time the founding of this 
school of higher learning. 

^ ^ It is a just and wholesome pride, ' ' says 
Mr. Fiske, ^' that New England, people feel 
in recalling the circumstances under which 
Harvard College was founded, in a little 
colony but six years of age, still struggling 
against the perils of the wilderness and the 



THE FOREFATHERS OF 

enmity of its sovereign. But it should not 
be forgotten that aims equally lofty and 
foresight equally intelligent were shown 
by the men who from 1614 to 1624 con- 
trolled the affairs of Virginia." At the 
moment of the general massacre, while 
Cambridge on the Charles was still a part 
of the unbroken wilderness, these men were 
ready to begin a college. 

They proposed to establish a university 
for English and Indian youths. The Lon- 
don Company endowed it with ten thou- 
sand acres of land; the Archbishops con- 
tributed fifteen hundred pounds; the 
Bishop of London added another thousand. 
An anonymous contributor, who signed 
himself *^ Dust and Ashes,'' promised a 
thousand more. Another benefactor was 
Nicholas Ferrar, of Little Gidding, the 
friend of George Herbert and Izaak Wal- 
ton. One donor gave his library, another 
provided Bibles and Prayer-books, another 
presented the Communion plate. Mr. 
George Thorp came over to be the rector 



JAMESTOWN 233 

of the college. He had hardly arrived 
when the savages fell upon the settlements 
and he was killed. Then for a good while 
the energies of the colony were all needed 
for preservation and recuperation. 

The new college was planted not at 
Jamestown, but at Williamsburg. Pres- 
ently, when the old town was burned, the 
people moved away from the malarious 
swamps and built their houses in the new 
place. Jamestown fell into ruins. Only 
the tower of the church remained to mark 
the spot where our American institutions 
began. No symbol could be more signifi- 
cant. It means that the foundation of the 
Eepublic was laid, in the midst of martyr- 
dom, upon the solid basis of religion. 



THE END 



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I COPY. DEL. TO CAT. OIV. 

FEB 6 1909 



FEB 10,1909 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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